Warlock Holmes--A Study in Brimstone (8 page)

“Dr. Watson?” said Mrs. Hudson, poking her head in at the door. “Lady here to see you, Doctor.”

She swung the door wide. There, framed against my only reasonable route of escape, was a “lady” with a bulging purse and a copy of
The Times
. She was a strapping six-footer with well-muscled shoulders and a prominent Adam’s apple. Obviously she’d had some hurry getting here, for her face still bore traces of the lather she had used when shaving off her beard. The dress could not have been hers, for it was made for a person barely half her size, but the bonnet actually did suit.

I’d say the disguise was insufficient to fool anybody, were it not for the fact that Mrs. Hudson had been taken in entirely. She fixed me with the first friendly smile I’d ever seen her perform and chirped, “Well, I’ll be off then. I hope you’ll not be wanting anything, Dr. Watson. It’s scrap-metal night and I’m just off to fire up the grinder. No, I won’t hear you call, I don’t think. Why, that old contraption would beat a brass band, wouldn’t it? Anyway, sure it’ll drown out any noise you two could make up here. Night all.”

For a second, I thought Mrs. Hudson was leaving us alone because she would be happy to see me murdered, but the spritely glint in her eye gave me to realize she had other reasons. The idea that young, unmarried doctors might be willing to rendezvous with aged spinsters, unchaperoned in their quarters at night, was a source of great hope to her. Doubtless, she had several scandalous novels that began in exactly that manner. Her rusty old heart swelled with optimism, she tripped lightly down the stairs and was gone. The killer smiled and stepped through the doorway.

Realizing my only hope lay in playing along, I croaked, “Good evening, Mrs…?”

“Sawyer,” the killer said, effecting a pathetic impersonation of an elderly crone. “I come about the advertisement. Do you still got that wrapper?”

“Just there, on the table; you’re welcome to it,” I said, nodding my head to where the bakery wrapper lay, beside the ineffectual pile of pistol parts.

“Oh, God-a-mercy, thank ’ee, good sir.”

“You’re very welcome. Good day.”

“It belongs to me daughter, you see,” the murderer continued, visibly counting off his rehearsed speech on his fingers, point by point. “She married that Tom Dennis—regular fellow, he is, so long as he’s not in his drink. He’s true enough at sea, but in port, well, the women and the liquor they get the better of him. Oh sure, my good daughter was due for a savage beating had you not recovered her missing wrapper.”

“How lucky that I did. Please, take it back to her.”

“She lives at 3 Mayfield Place, Peckham and I live at 13 Duncan Street, Houndsditch. She was on her way to a circus that night, when she dropped the wrapper.”

“Ha!” I cried. “3 Lauriston Gardens does not lie between Mayfield Place and any circus that was open on the night of… Wait… I don’t care. Please take it.”

“Sally Sawyer, that was her name; now Sally Dennis since Tom Dennis wedded her. I have their marriage license here, if you care to see.”

“Not necessary, please…”

“Now ’ave a look, sir, and ye’ll know I speak true.”

“Please, I believe anything you say, no matter how preposterous!” I pleaded. “I have no intention of fact-checking any of this! Just take the wrapper and go!”

But he ignored me utterly and continued, “It was a token of their love you see.”

I gave a deep sigh and muttered, “How odd, yet perfectly credible.”

“It’s off the first donut what he bought her.”

“I’m sure it was a very nice donut,” I said, which turned out to be a terrible mistake.

The killer’s face went pale. A look of remorse and longing that would have drawn sympathy from the very stones crossed his face for a moment, but was chased away by a flood of vengeful hate that froze me where I stood. He howled with a rage so intense he managed to drown out Mrs. Hudson’s scrap grinder for a moment, then turned away to punch the wall. His fist shattered lath and plaster and sank in so deep I half fancied he’d broken through the opposite side as well.

“That it was,” he told me, all pretense of the fictional Mrs. Sawyer gone from his voice. “The best one ever.”

He closed his eyes, hung his head, withdrew his fist from the wall, then promptly plunged it through again, setting a second hole just six inches from the first.

With trembling hands, I picked the wrapper up from the table. Inch by inch, though terror gripped my heart, I approached him. A sudden inspiration took me; as stealthily as my unsteady fingers could manage, I tore a tiny corner from the wrapper and placed it in my pocket. I forced myself across the room to where he stood, with his fist in the wall and his petticoat all in disarray. I placed the wrapper in his free hand, closed his fingers over it and squeaked, “It’s yours.”

In my heart, I prayed he had not seen me tear away the corner of his precious wrapper. His back was to me. How could he have noticed? I hate to think what would have occurred if he had.

“Thank you,” he said. Strange how heartfelt his gratitude seemed. He sounded as if I had just saved him from the gallows and I had an instant of guilt when I realized I intended to do just the opposite. Without another word, he drew his fist from the wall and disappeared through the door. The moment he was gone, my knees gave out and I would have plunged to the floor, except I knew I must observe all I could about the man, in the hope of catching him later. I staggered to the window and sagged into the very armchair I had thought to deposit Warlock in just that morning. The killer walked into the street, approached a waiting cab and called out loudly, so that all the street might hear, “3 Mayfield Place, Peckham, driver.”

All this in spite of the fact that there
was
no driver. After shooting a fleeting glance up and down the street, the old crone bounded up into the driver’s seat herself and whipped the horse into a gallop.

At least we had it right that the killer was a cab driver.

The urge to collapse overcame me. I staggered across the room to the brandy decanter, then back to the chair before the fire. Here at last, I allowed my legs to buckle and I fell in a heap, interrupting my tremors, from time to time, to pour a healthy draught of brandy down my throat.

It was nearly an hour and a half before Warlock returned. By that time, I had already turned away two other callers. One was some sort of insane baked-goods collector. The other had just come from my bank and claimed to be a Nigerian prince, in spite of the fact that he was clearly of Chinese descent. His family fortune had been seized, he said, and if only I would deposit a thousand pounds in my own bank account (the number of which was written on a crumpled piece of paper, clutched in his right hand), this would somehow allow him access to his own monies, ten thousand pounds of which he would immediately pay to me. Exhausted and by no account sober, I told him I would. The instant he left, I made a note to open a new account at my earliest convenience.

At last, Warlock burst through the door, in high spirits. He clucked, “Hi-ho, Watson! I’ve just had a merry chase. I quite forgot: Grogsson was headed out to the theater this evening! I checked a few, but never found him. Any luck here?”

I nodded.

“Did you encounter the killer?”

Again, I nodded.

“Tell me all, Watson! Tell me all!”

I shook my head.

“Perhaps tomorrow, then. You look quite undone, I must say.”

He leapt into the other armchair and poured himself a snifter of brandy. He had no intention of drinking it, I knew, but would often pour himself one whenever anyone else had a glass, so he could pretend to be joining in. He settled back, smiling, but then jerked forward, his reverie interrupted by sudden remembrance. After rummaging through his coat for a few seconds, he withdrew a small metal curio and said, “By the by, Watson, I found this queer little device in my pocket. Have you any idea what it can be?”

I can hardly describe the wave of fury that washed over me. If I had not been in an alcoholic stupor, I think I would have leapt from my seat and throttled him. Yet, in my current state, there was nothing I could do but say, “That, Holmes, is the firing hammer of a Webley-Pryse .455 revolver.”

His face contorted in a mixture of amusement and wonder. “Is it?”

“I am fairly certain.”

I AWOKE MUCH LATER THAN USUAL THE NEXT MORNING
—just before 10 a.m. I had not meant to sleep so long, yet the body is always master of the mind and my own physical form was still in feeble shape. Having wasted so badly since being wounded, it was in no condition to receive the quantity of stimulation the previous day had yielded, and not half the brandy. I had the impression that my slumber had been deep and profound and I realized I had no idea what had wakened me from it.

Mrs. Hudson’s next shriek reminded me. Danger! Screaming! That was it. I rolled from bed and stumbled for the door, still dressed in the crumpled remains of yesterday’s suit. By the time I reached our sitting room, Warlock was already at the door to the hall, shouting, “It’s quite all right, Mrs. Hudson, they are here by my invitation! Really, I hope in the future you will keep a more civil tongue in your head when you address my guests.”

In principal, I agreed. In practice, I had no time to voice an opinion on the matter before I began screaming myself. In through the door streamed a swarm of rats—probably a hundred of them. They swirled into our sitting room. They scuttled over our table and into our cupboards, quite devouring the last of my crumpets. You must not think less of me for screaming at the sight of them. I am a grown man and have certainly seen rats before, but none like these. Each was afflicted in some unique and horrifying way. One had eight legs. One was the size of a dog, yet colored like a cow. One was inside out. One stopped upon my shoe and turned its eye up at me—it had only one, in the middle of its head.

A hand upon my shoulder stopped my screaming and I turned to behold Warlock who, with a hurt expression, said, “Watson, please, a little kindness to our guests, don’t you think?”

“What the hell are they?” I demanded, quite forgetting to be kind.

“Nothing so out of the usual,” Holmes responded. “These are some of the rats that live on Baker Street with us.”

“But, what’s wrong with them?”

“Watson! How rude! They are merely unusual. Rats, like people, are subject to accidents of birth. And just like people, the unafflicted members of society—the regular rat folk—quite unfairly disdain these good rodents you see here today.”

“So all these rats are…”

“The Baker Street Irregulars.”

I recoiled towards a chair, but it was occupied by a rat with long whip-like tails in place of ears and another with tiny stigmata. Reeling about the room with some care not to step on our strange visitors, I sought an unoccupied spot to rest myself, but found none. Holmes did not even try to mask his disappointment. He tutted loudly and turned to the one normal-looking rat in the room, saying, “There, Wiggles, do you see? Do you see what a stir they make? I am sorry, but in the future, you had best come up alone. The rest of you lot must wait outside, I fear.”

The normal rat looked up at him for a moment, then began to shift. The bones moved about beneath its skin. Its hair grew back into its hide, even as the body began to expand and contort into a bipedal form. In two winks, a young street urchin stood before me, clad in rags, with a battered cap in hand.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Holmes, sir,” he said and smiled at me, devilishly.

I grasped my chest and fell into the nearest chair, sending six-eyes rat and open-sores-that-smell-like-chocolate rat scurrying for safety. Warlock asked the rat-boy, “Anything to report yet, Wiggles?”

“Nuffin’ yet, sir, beggin’ yer pardon. I gots all the boys gathered up and we’re on the streets. We’ll have him for you, sure as we’re breathin’.”

“I never doubted it,” Warlock confided. “Here is one day’s wages, in advance.”

From one of his pockets, Warlock produced twenty or thirty pounds of rotting cabbage (by means I still cannot explain) and began casting it about the room to the waiting Irregulars.

“Very gen’rous, sir,” Wiggles said, with a tip of his cap. “We’ll be off, then. Oh, brought yer paper, sir.”

Wiggles gave a nod to big-as-a-dog-but-colored-like-a-cow rat, who began a rigorous campaign of retching and choking. At last, with a final spasm, he regurgitated our paper onto the table, gave himself a congratulatory nod for a job well done, then turned to join the swarm as it scurried out the door and down the hall. I watched them go with horror and disbelief vying for control of my wits. Warlock only turned to the paper, wiped off some stomach acid and chewed-up cabbage, and began scanning the first few pages. Suddenly he piped, “Watson, look! We’re famous!”

After perusing the article for a few moments, I was inclined to disagree. Though the case was causing quite a sensation, I was relieved to find neither Holmes nor I were mentioned by name. In fact, Holmes was mentioned by the wrong name, when the writer declared that the unwelcome consultant, Mr. Rache, had once again appeared and scrawled his name in blood on the wall. Lestrade and Grogsson fared even worse. It was clear the author believed one or both of them were guilty of the crime. He complained that they would probably “solve” it, as they usually did, finding a party who would prove more guilty than they, even if he seemed less. The article included a wealth of information, much of which we had previously lacked. The reporters had already uncovered the name of the deceased and the fact that he was traveling with one Joseph Strangerson, his secretary. Further, they had information as to where the two had been staying—Madame Charpontier’s boarding house in Toruay Terrace—although they had checked out the evening before the crime. The paper even detailed the last time Drebber and Strangerson had been seen together: just after quarter past nine on Friday night, arguing on the platform at Euston Station. The two men had then walked off in separate directions. On a whim, I flipped through the paper until I found the schedule for the trains. Likely as not, the two of them had just missed the Liverpool train. The question was, where had they gone after missing the train? Why not head back to the boarding house together? I was forming a strategy of investigation, when Holmes—sitting in his armchair by the window, picking cabbage from his shirt front—muttered, “Oh dear. It looks as if Grogsson has read the paper this morning.”