Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine

by G. S. Denning

  “Oh, no! It’s marvelous! I saw it down at Brombert’s House of Curios in Covent Garden some weeks ago and I’d been thinking of picking it up for some time. When you fell unconscious… well… I was almost happy to have the excuse. It’s a most useful little device for keeping incapacitated people alive. You just drain some of the person’s blood and pour it in here—”

  “What? You’ve been draining my blood?”

  “Me? No, no. I’ve no art for it. Lestrade has been draining your blood.”

  Holmes pointed. I shifted my gaze in the direction he indicated, pulled back the covers and beheld my right arm. The sleeve of my nightshirt had been messily torn away to expose the full length of my limb to the vampiric administrations of Scotland Yard’s second-least-popular detective inspector. Dozens of horrific fang-marks lined my skin, from my biceps down to the tips of my fingers.

  “Aaaaagh!”

  “Always nice to have a specialist on hand,” said Holmes. “Once you’ve got the blood, you get whatever you want to infuse into it and measure it in this little scale. Food, medicine, whatever is needed, although you can’t go over seven percent by weight. Then you light the candle and boil the blood until the infusion is dissolved. When it’s ready, it drips out of this hose here, and you just inject it back in.”

  Holmes now indicated the hollow of my left elbow, which—in my horror over the fate of my other arm, I had failed to realize—bore a grapefruit-sized swelling.

  “Aaaaaagh!”

  “Ah, yes… Sorry about that,” said Holmes. “I went out to help Lestrade on a case, last night, you see, and we left you to Grogsson. It turns out that a seven percent solution is quite a bit more than is needed for most medicines, but it isn’t much food. I’m absolutely certain we told Grogsson not to try to inject the entirety of the beef Wellington in one go. But you know how excited he gets. Still, no harm done, eh? Here you are, hale and hearty!”

  “There’s an entire beef Wellington in my arm?”

  “Oh, I suspect Grogsson may have had a bite or two, but—”

  “No, no, no! This is all impossible, Holmes! Blood cannot be made to dissolve beef Wellington. Nor can it be boiled and then returned—still functional—into the human body. And you expect my immune system to digest an entire dinner, which you insist has been inserted subcutaneously? Preposterous!”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Really now, Watson! After all you’ve seen in my company—all you’ve experienced—you’ve still no faith in me? Still no imagination?”

  “You’ll forgive me, I hope, if the state of my imagination does not command as much of my concern as the state of my bloody arms!”

  “That isn’t the point, Watson. The point is that you are alive and well and ready to get out of bed, because look who’s coming at four o’clock and I don’t know what to do!”

  Holmes removed a card from his jacket pocket and held it in front of my face.

  “Lord Robert St. Simon?” I asked. “Who is that?”

  “He’s this horrifyingly important fellow I’ve been working for,” said Holmes, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “He’s a lord! And apparently a saint. I’ve been helping with his wedding. Only, there seems to have been a bit of a mix-up with his new bride, who sort of vanished in the middle of the wedding breakfast. It’s in all the papers. I’ve saved a pile of them for you.”

  I sighed. “What o’clock is it?”

  “I don’t know… about a quarter after two, I should think.”

  “We haven’t much time. He’ll be expecting tea.”

  “Why?”

  “Because four o’clock is teatime, Holmes. I’ll see if I can get myself cleaned up a bit. You run out for scones and a pot of jam, then make some tea, won’t you?”

  “But how?”

  “You can keep a fellow alive for two weeks via the intravenous administration of beef Wellington, but you can’t make tea?”

  He shrugged.

  “Fine. Just get the scones, all right?”

  * * *

  By “I saved a pile of newspapers for you”, Holmes had apparently meant, “I have been reading the newspapers for the last two weeks and leaving bits of them everywhere. Oh, and I made hats out of some of them.” The sitting room was in a dreadful state. Interspersed amongst the newspapers and plates of toast-crusts and soup bowls were numerous scrolls of a magical and distinctly waterlogged appearance.

  “Holmes, what are all these?”

  “Remember that sea monster who promised me information on soul-binding magics if I could save his wedding from Irene Adler?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, those are them. Or… those are they? Anyway, Watson, they are fascinating! Real magic, achievable within this realm, without having to call on the help of outside entities. Can you imagine? To be able to use magic without damaging our world! Wouldn’t that be great? So I’ve been practicing and practicing with them for the last two weeks!”

  Much as I dreaded the prospect of Holmes teaching himself new magics, I had other matters at hand. I dug into the pile of discarded newspapers, searching for background on my pending visitor.

  The first thing I found was a column from a few Wednesdays ago, stating that Lord Robert St. Simon would wed Hatty Doran of San Francisco, California, a week from Saturday at the Church of St. George, Hanover Square. That was all. Given the illustrious parentage of the groom, the announcement was brief, to say the least. One might be tempted to say “clipped”. One might also note the suspicious proximity of the announcement to the event itself. This, perhaps, was an attempt to stop the local wags from commenting on the possible motivations of the groom.

  Which it had absolutely failed to do. The next bit I found was a rather opinionated opinion piece wherein the writer could not help but wonder what was wrong with England’s ladies that our eligible titled must be forced to the act of importation. Were there not sufficient twenty-three-year-old beauties to please the forty-one-year-old, as-yet-unmarried second sons of our dukes? Might Lord St. Simon’s particular choice have something to do with the rumors of his family’s failing finances and the fact that Hatty’s father—Aloysius Doran—owned about half the gold that had ever been found in California? The writer felt guilty for having assigned such a base motive to so illustrious a personage and had sought clarification from Lord St. Simon’s father, the Duke of Balmoral. Sadly, the old fellow could not be reached for comment as he was otherwise engaged: selling off the family’s art collection as fast as was humanly possible.

  And then the papers fairly exploded. There was not a single London daily that did not hover—with salacious abandon—over the strange events surrounding Lord St. Simon’s nuptials and the subsequent brevity of his wedded bliss. From what I could gather, the wedding was carried off without a hitch, St. George’s being open to the public at the time (which may have said something about the state of the duke’s finances). Following the service, the wedding party retired to a furnished house—rented by Aloysius Doran—for the wedding breakfast. Apparently, there were two signs of trouble. First, the bride—who had previously appeared happy and eager for the union—displayed considerable consternation once the vows had been exchanged. Secondly, the gates of the house were besieged by a mysterious woman of low character, who said she had some claim on Lord St. Simon. This lady was escorted away with considerable alacrity and the wedding breakfast began. Just a few minutes in, the new Lady St. Simon had begged a moment to freshen up, stepped away from the table, and disappeared.

  Her long-time maid claimed to have seen her mistress slip upstairs, throw a duster over her wedding dress, pop a Stetson on her head, and jump out of the upstairs window. Then again, the maid was American so her opinion was disregarded, in accordance with the acknowledged best practice regarding all American opinions.

  The English public was quite taken with the story and had joined in with careless abandon. The missing bride had been spotted several times, in locations ranging from a merchant steamer bound for Cala
is, to a shallow grave in Dublin. One overenthusiastic gentleman claimed to have found her disembodied fingers in a tin of pickled herring. He even displayed the proof. Yet, as the gentleman in question had three freshly missing digits, his evidence was regarded as little more than a desperate and medically inadvisable plea for attention.

  I had got thus far when I was interrupted by an imperious knock on the door of our rooms and the voice of Mrs. Hudson, stridently shrieking, “Lord Robert Walsingham de Vere St. Simon, scion of House Plantagenet and of House Tudor, wronged, slandered and possibly single, to see Mr. Warlock Holmes!”

  From her tone, I could tell she had heard of Lord St. Simon’s recent misfortunes, become just as obsessed as the rest of the general public, and was more than willing to personally assuage any loneliness his Lordship might be feeling. I rose with a sigh, went to the door, swung it wide and said, “Ah, Lord St. Simon, do come in.”

  Lord St. Simon was… well… one hates to say it, after only one brief glance at a person, but… Lord St. Simon was rather horrible. He had sallow skin and milky, lazy eyes brimming with judgment. His clothing was impeccable: a black frock coat, white waistcoat, yellow gloves, lightcolored gaiters and golden spectacles dangling by a cord from his right hand with a particular air of moneyed nonchalance that I’m sure he must have practiced in the mirror. He had absolutely no jawline and no chin. It was as if these two features had one day declared, “We are traditional symbols of manliness and therefore wish nevermore to be associated with this awful, awful fop.” They had then buggered off, leaving the featureless expanse below Lord St. Simon’s lower lip to slope gently away, until that point—unique to each observer—where it must cease being “face” and start being “neck”. He had that aristocratic habit of holding his head high, which would not have been so bad if he had not also possessed one of those short, piggy little noses that angles up at the bottom. The combination ensured that anybody who was speaking to him was forced to stare directly into his nostrils the entire time. He had a tangled, thorny profusion of nose hairs that bristled aggressively at me. I was almost glad for them; otherwise, I think I might have been able to see all the way to the back of his skull. He regarded me for the barest instant, then said, “Who are you?”

  “I am Warlock Holmes’s companion. My name is Dr. John Watson.”

  “And what exactly is wrong with your arm?”

  Though I had managed to force my shirtsleeve over the unwanted Wellington-lump, I had no means of concealing it. The seams bulged and strained.

  “A passing malady,” I said.

  He hesitated upon the threshold.

  “And by ‘malady’ I mean ‘injury’,” I said. “It is assuredly not contagious.”

  He gave a snort of grudging acceptance, which made his nose hairs waggle straight out at me, and stepped inside.

  “Will you take tea?” I asked.

  “I will.”

  At this point, Holmes emerged sheepishly from his room and muttered, “Oh, Saint Lord! So good to see you again. Um… what brings you by?”

  Lord St. Simon gave a sideways glance at the pile of crumpled newspapers and replied, “I believe you know.”

  “Oh yes! I heard about that,” said Holmes. “Bad luck. Yes, just… bad luck, indeed.”

  “Luck, you say? Are you sure it wasn’t the work of evil spirits?”

  “What? Hey! Why would you think that? No, no, no!” Holmes stammered.

  With a polite cough I wondered, “Lord St. Simon, do you have reason to suspect the involvement of evil spirits?”

  “Only that I hired this buffoon to keep them away and he cannot seem to do anything right!”

  “Yet why hire anybody to so strange a purpose, if there was no perceived danger?” I pressed.

  “Oh, it is a family tradition. Always have a clever solicitor examine any addition to the family to make sure it is legally advisable. Always have your most trusted accountant make sure it is financially sound. Always have a sorcerer on hand to make sure no invisible forces are arrayed against you. Silly, I know. But my distant relative, Queen Elizabeth, kept John Dee about and if it was good enough for her, well…”

  “Indeed,” I acceded.

  “The only problem is,” said Lord St. Simon, with a wet, hairy sniff, “it’s getting rather hard to find sorcerers! Not so many lying about as there used to be, are there? One is forced to make do with whatever second-rate refuse one can find!”

  “Hey!” said Holmes.

  “And you are now convinced evil spirits have crossed your marriage?”

  “What other explanation is there?” he demanded. “I am a prize, sir. Everybody knows my older brother shall never marry. My father is elderly and will not live long. What is the result? Any who think to wed me know that they will presently be wife to a duke. Why should any woman chase such a prize, obtain it, and abandon it in the instant of her purest happiness?”

  “Why indeed?” I asked, somewhat dryly. I’ll confess that only a few minutes in Lord St. Simon’s company had been quite enough to suggest one or two motivations for spousal withdrawal that Lord St. Simon himself perhaps lacked the perspective to observe. “And it is your intention, I presume, to secure Mr. Holmes’s aid in discovering the fate of your wife?”

  “It is my intention, sir, to see justice done!” He turned to Holmes and sneered, “I’ll see you hang for witchcraft.”

  “Oh, no, no,” I said. “Surely that law is not still on the statute.”

  “Sir,” said Lord St. Simon, haughtily, “this is England!”

  Holmes gave me a look of some urgency.

  “Yes, well… it’s so hard to prove evil demonic influence in a court of law, you know?” I said. “And there are so many mundane explanations as to what might have occurred. Perhaps the machinations of a jealous rival? Perhaps the severity of her sudden happiness overcame her wit and plunged her into madness!”

  “I have considered that,” Lord St. Simon admitted.

  “Yes, I’ll bet you have,” I said. “You know, Holmes and I have unraveled more than a few mysteries such as this. Would it not be wiser to see if we can determine the fate of your bride before we involve the courts?”

  Our visitor hesitated, his nose hairs waving doubtfully back and forth.

  “And of course we must consider the public exposure of your belief in evil spirits, which such a trial would involve. Imagine the mockery by the common rabble!”

  Lord St. Simon went white.

  Well…

  Whiter.

  “I am not accustomed to sharing the intimate details of my personal misfortunes…”

  “Of course, yet these are desperate times, are they not? Here, just sit down, Lord St. Simon, and tell me about Lady St. Simon, née Hatty Doran. What kind of woman is she?”

  “Not… not the type of woman I expected to wed,” he said with an uncomfortable wince as he settled into one of our chairs. “And yet, not without her charms. Be assured, gentlemen, I would not have bestowed upon her the name it is my honor to bear if I did not think she were—at heart—a gentlewoman. Yet she is American, you know. The daughter of a mining baron. And her father’s rise to prominence is so recent that she grew to adulthood in mining camps and the wilderness, rather than in a proper genteel environment. I have a picture of her here…”

  Lady St. Simon’s face could hardly have provided a greater contrast to her new husband’s. Here was a woman in the flower of youth and happiness. True, the unrelenting California sun had placed a few premature wrinkles, yet they were clustered at the corners of her mouth and eyes and told that here was a woman who liked to smile. Indeed, she had eschewed the custom of staring dourly at the camera and had given the photographer a funny, one-sided grin. It was as if the camera had snapped just as she’d finished saying, “Hey, wanna play catch?” I found the lady irresistibly charming.

  “And how did a person such as this come to your attention?” I wondered.

  “Through our fathers,” Lord St. Simon said. “You
see, as a young man, her father, Aloysius Doran, was… well, he was named Aloysius Doran. It’s rather a hard name to bear in a mining camp. All the other fellows were running about with names like Jack Bootstrap and Dick Puncher, from what I gather. Everyone always expected Mr. Doran to be a great deal fancier than he actually was, and once he’d made his fortune, matters got worse. He had the name and he had the money, but he had no manners, no breeding, and no connections. He needed to join his family to another so illustrious that his status would be beyond reproach.”

  “Enter your own father,” I said, “whose money troubles are no longer concealable. He can trace his lineage to both the Tudors and Plantagenets. What he cannot do is promise he’ll be able to pay for groceries next week.”

  “That is salacious and scandalous, sir!” Lord St. Simon thundered. His nose hairs lunged angrily towards me.

  “Do the papers have it right that Hatty Doran’s dowry ran considerably over six figures?”

  “No more than is normal for my family,” Lord St. Simon insisted. “No more than is called for.”

  “And—in view of the fact that the wedding was held—this much, at least, will be retained by your family?”

  “Thank God, yes!” said Lord St. Simon, expelling a sudden, involuntary sigh of relief. “It looks like the courts are on our side, there. There’s really no way Mr. Doran can get it back. But what of the rest of it? He isn’t a young man, you know, and Hatty is his only heir!”

  “Yes, well, I believe his Lordship has made his position clear,” I said. “But tell me: the disturbance at the gate of Doran’s house, the woman who had to be led away—what do you know of her?”

  “Oh, that’s just Flora; spare her no thought!”

  “So you know her?”

  “As we are being frank with each other: yes. I know her rather well. But what of it? She has no basis for complaint. I’ve been more than generous. Yet I have always made it clear that she who cannot have a child certainly cannot have a duke. And let’s not even talk about the difference in social standing, shall we? No. Flora’s not above making a scene—if she didn’t have a theatrical streak, she wouldn’t be in the theater, would she?—but she’d never hurt anybody.”