Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine

by G. S. Denning

  How well I remember his look of dread as the mouthpiece neared his lips, the whiteness of his face and the beads of sweat that stood out upon his brow. With fondness, I recall that his initial reaction to that first puff was not his expression—oh, how well he mastered himself—but a trembling spasm that started in his stomach and ran out to all four limbs. Then the coughing and retching took over. Thaddeus seemed rather hurt by this, until Holmes insisted that he simply was not used to the hookah, but he liked it very well. Yes. Yes. It was forceful yet mellow with a fruity initial bite but a woody undertone with just a hint of… was that nutmeg?

  Personally, I suspected it was swamp gas.

  “Holmes you look ill,” I said. “Come here and let me examine you. Miss Morstan, I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but if you’d be so kind as to switch places with—”

  “No! Nonsense! You stay right there!”

  “Holmes, are you sure?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Because you look rather unwell.”

  “I’m fine. And Miss Morstan must stay where she is, because… because… I haven’t finished my hookah!”

  “Oh? And you intend to?”

  “Well, yes, I… I’m enjoying it, you see. Thaddeus, if you’d be so kind…”

  One thing I will never fault Holmes for is his conviction. By God, he sat there the whole trip chatting with Thaddeus about the finer points of smoking, taking puffs from the hookah and occasionally opening the carriage door to spew still-smoking toast-and-soup vomit all over the street.

  “Brother Bartholomew found the treasure by a simple application of maths,” Thaddeus told us, as Holmes decorated the cobblestones for the third time. “Yes. Hew. You see an external measurement of Pondicherry Lodge revealed the house to be seventy-four feet high, but by measuring the floors, Brother Bartholomew found he could only account for seventy of them.”

  “Wait a minute now,” I cried. “Your family’s home is seventy-four feet high?

  Thaddeus nodded. “Mew. But you see, the key was that Brother Bartholomew could not account for the extra four feet. We knew it could not be under the house, for I did not even include the fifty-two feet of cellar in my initial figure—”

  “A hundred and twenty-six vertical feet? Your house is more than twelve stories tall?”

  “Oh no. Only seven.”

  “Some of them must be of preposterous height, then.”

  “Larger than the house I am in now,” Thaddeus confirmed, “but that is my only basis for comparison. Now, do you want to hear about the missing four feet or not?”

  Mary gave me a vicious jab in the ribs with her elbow and insisted, “We do.”

  “Brother Bartholomew realized that the extra four feet could only be accounted for at the top of the house. Hew. Now that is funny, for the attic has always been his particular haunt, ever since he was a child and Father put him in charge of the alchemical laboratory we used to make Mother’s perfume.”

  “Tell me, Thaddeus, did your mother’s ‘perfume’ smell anything like your hookah smoke?”

  “Ha! Hew! Why would it?” Thaddeus scoffed, but then pursed his lips and added, “Although, now that you mention it…”

  “That is because—” I began, but a perfectly savage kick from Mary Morstan turned my sentence into a surprised yelp, followed by a number of words I ought not put to paper.

  “The extra four feet?” she reminded us.

  “Hmmm. Hew. Yes. Brother Bartholomew and I made a number of excavations in and around the house over the years. But it was only when he broke through the attic ceiling that he found—”

  “My treasure!” Mary crowed.

  “Well, our treasure, yes,” said Thaddeus, his face showing the first signs of worry that Actual Mary Morstan might not be the same as Poetry-Journal Mary Morstan.

  “Let’s go get it!”

  Rubbing my shin, I reminded her, “We are currently driving around in the middle of the night on exactly that errand, madam.”

  That quieted her a bit. Of course it could not calm Holmes’s terrible noises. Coughing. Occasional vomiting. Deep belly gurgles worse than those he made on the occasions when he drank proper poison. Yet, since no amount of intestinal discomfort actually slows a carriage, we soon arrived at Pondicherry Lodge.

  Good God.

  The thing was monstrous. I’m sure only the fact it stood within a little hollow kept it from being one of England’s most famous eyesores. If it had been on a hill, it would have dominated Upper Norwood and I’m sure been the subject of endless local debate. She was seventy-four feet tall and there wasn’t a straight line in her. It was as if her architect had said, “Look the important thing is that it’s huge. If it happens to go off to the left a bit, then to the right, then lean precariously forward for a while as if it’s just going to tip over and fall on whoever is in the driveway, I find that perfectly acceptable. Now, build the thing.” Pondicherry Lodge would have been quite grand if someone had taken the time to straighten her. Instead, someone had taken the time to rifle her. Her grounds were dotted with innumerable pits, where one or the other of the Sholto brothers had dug looking for the Agra treasure. In fact, even the exterior walls of the old house had been breached in several locations, leaving holes that looked like artillery hits. There must also have been some notion that the base of a tree would be a fine place to hide a treasure, for every single one had been undermined to such an extent that they leaned at precarious angles.

  A blast of pale moonlight threw angular shadows across the house’s irregular lines and did a fine job of pointing out: “Hello, I just wanted you nice people to realize you are about to head into a place that is not normal.”

  Yes, thank you, moon.

  Thaddeus put on his most determined face, strode to the porch as gallantly as his little legs would allow, and gave the massive oak door a masterful pounding.

  Splat, splat, splat, went his doughy little hand, so feebly that only those right next to him might have a chance of hearing it.

  Luckily, there was a bell.

  The man who opened the door was something like Williams, but nowhere near as subtle. If Williams was the former lightweight champion of England, this fellow must have fought in the yak-weight division. Apparently, it was a family habit to select the help solely from the ranks of England’s most hardened ex-boxers. He cracked open the door and exclaimed, “Why, Master Thaddeus! What are you doing here at this hour?”

  “That is no concern of yours, McMurdo!” our host thundered, insofar as a pile of shapeless white skin could thunder. “We have business with Brother Bartholomew; admit us at once!”

  “Right, but… it is my concern, since I take my orders from Master Bartholomew, and he’s asleep at the moment, and I’m supposed to keep him safe and undisturbed, and you’ve shown up in the middle of the night with three strangers. You see what it looks like from where I’m standing, Master Thaddeus?”

  Apparently, he did, for he wilted a little. Holmes, however, stepped boldly past him, waving one finger in the air and proclaiming, “Not all strangers, McMurdo! You may have forgotten me, but I’ll wager you’ve not forgot that cross-punch I landed under your chin, eh?”

  It rather seemed McMurdo had forgotten them both. He narrowed his eyes at Holmes and muttered, “Yeah… we call those ‘uppercuts’.” Then, with a gasp of recognition, he sprang back from the door and cried, “By God’s holy balls! It’s you! The Whirling Fisticuffsman!”

  “The what?” I asked Holmes.

  He gave me a prideful beam and said, “Did I not mention, Watson? I may have dabbled in amateur boxing for a time.”

  “That can’t have gone well.”

  “What do you mean? I retired undefeated!”

  “Why would anybody retire if they were still undefeated?” I wondered, but McMurdo illuminated me.

  “I do remember that uppercut! It were the strangest thing. Hardly felt like nothing at all—”

  “Hey!”

  “—but
it took me right up, off me feet. Way up. Ten, maybe fifteen feet above the crowd. Then with no warning, it dropped me down amongst the screamin’ mob and the barker called the fight. Why, the Whirling Fisticuffsman musta taken ten or twelve men down like that! But where’s that big moustache you used to have? And how’d you grow your teeth back?”

  I slapped a palm to my brow. My own knowledge of Holmes’s habits painted the rest of the picture. “So, you had disguised yourself…”

  “…as a common Irish working boxer!” Holmes confirmed. “And let me tell you, it was my funnest disguise ever. Except the moustache kept falling off whenever I got punched in the face. Still, I had a fine time, trying my luck in ‘the fancy’. Who knows how far I could have got if the fellows hadn’t got rather afraid of me and started drawing official attention to my unique fighting style.”

  “And this is why someone retires undefeated, one supposes?”

  “And hides in a cellar for two months, hoping he won’t be burned for witchcraft. Yes. But I’m sure McMurdo won’t keep us standing about in the cold now, eh?”

  “Well,” said the big man, “I prob’ly couldn’t.”

  “Exactly!” said Holmes, giving McMurdo a companionable pat on the shoulder as he strode past. “Now, where would I find this Master Bartholomew of yours?”

  “He’s likely up in the—”

  It’s you! The Whirling Fisticuffsman!

  But Bartholomew Sholto’s hulking bodyguard was cut off by a strange sound. It started quite soft, from far above us, but grew louder as we listened.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud. Pant, pant. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.Pant, pant. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!”

  And so on, and so on, as a rather round lady in her early seventies made a panicked sort of progress down the stairs towards us, from the shadowed heights of Pondicherry Lodge, all the way to the well-lit foyer at the bottom. As she reached us, sweat-slicked, breathless and still attempting to scream, McMurdo laid a concerned hand on her shoulder and asked, “Why, Mrs. Bernstone! Whatever can the matter be?”

  “It’s Master Bartholome—Oh God… Master Barth—Oh, for Christ’s sake! Oh, that’s one tall goddamn house! It’s Master Bartholomew!”

  “What about him?”

  “Well he’s been locked up in that laboratory all day, hasn’t he? I tried to get him to come down to bed, I did. Said it was late and hadn’t he better come back to his nice pile of cushions and have a hookah and a lie-down? But there was no answer! And I looked through the keyhole—God help me—and there’s something wrong with him! Terribly wrong! Oh, Christ, but the house is tall! Get me a glass of water, won’t you?”

  Holmes struck a heroic pose and declared, “Seems as if we’ve come just in time, eh, Watson?”

  I wilted. “Really? All those stairs?”

  “Come on, man! The game is afoot!”

  If I had somewhat rebounded from my pathetic state of that morning, the long slog up all those stairs undid my progress. We went up the elegant, curving staircase to a smart-looking landing, on the floor that held all the family bedrooms, I think. The floor above that was slightly more threadbare—servants and storage, perhaps. The next floor was composed of a single room: the massive vault where Mrs. Sholto had lived for many years, in an atmosphere of pure “perfume”. From there, a rickety wooden staircase led up to the floor above, the alchemical workshop where the chemicals were mixed to keep the more unusual Sholtos alive and well. Nobody answered my knock at the chemical-stained old door, nor my repeated attempts to call Bartholomew by name. I tried the handle, but found the door locked. Deeming that whatever tactics served nosey servants might serve a gentleman as well, I put my eye to the keyhole.

  “Good God, Holmes!”

  There, propped in his chair in a circle of flickering candlelight, sat Bartholomew Sholto.

  Or what was left of him, poor fellow.

  He must have been Thaddeus’s twin, for if Bartholomew had been well and moving, I’d have had a hard time telling the one from the other. But he had practically melted into his chair, in a relaxation so profound that a wad of wet clay would have had trouble matching it. His neck was invisible, his head squashed down into his body so completely that they looked like one. His arm dangled off the chair’s armrest as if it might be boneless, composed of white rubber. He stared straight at the keyhole with a broad, welcoming smile, somewhat spoiled by the fact that the left side of his face sagged so badly that his teeth seemed to be pouring towards the floor.

  Oh, and also: he was dead.

  “Get Mrs. Bernstone up here, immediately!” I cried.

  From below came the sound of the old housekeeper, calling, “Are you kidding?”

  McMurdo arrived at the top of the stairs, puffing and panting. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s Bartholomew! I fear the worst. I must get in to see if we can help him, or at least determine what has happened, but the door is locked. I thought Mrs. Bernstone might have a key.”

  “Maybe,” said the old fighter, “but the only key I know of for sure is the one Bartholomew keeps.”

  “Damn!” I cried. “That means it’s probably in there with him. We’ve got to find a way to—”

  From behind me came a flash of purple light, an ear-piercing shriek, and the gentle sound of lock parts clattering to the floor.

  “No, we are in luck,” said Holmes. “The lock has exploded.”

  “What? Why? How?” McMurdo cried.

  Holmes gave him a friendly smile. “Likely a booby-trap, don’t you think?”

  “Possibly,” I said, giving Holmes a warning look. “Come on, I want to see what happened in there.”

  The most apparent thing, I had already guessed: murder. Bartholomew Sholto had no pulse, no breath, and his body was cool. Rigor mortis had not set in, but I suspected it never would; Bartholomew’s body felt like a rubber bladder full of water. Whatever had killed him seemed to have liquefied his innards, while leaving his skin intact. Exactly what chemical or poison could do that, I had no idea, but as to how the agent had been administered, that much was clear: a jagged thorn protruded from the back of his neck. It was made of a substance rather like a compromise between wood and bone. As I knelt to examine it, Holmes drifted up behind me and said, in a quiet whisper, “I wouldn’t touch that, if I were you.”

  “But, what is it, Holmes?”

  “Most likely not a healthy dose of vitamins and minerals, don’t you think?”

  “But look at the material of this thorn! Doesn’t it seem… unusual?”

  “More than that, Watson. I suspect it is otherworldly. Look at the state of the man; he’s practically juice. And let us remember: the other otherworldly poisons we have seen all have a tendency to liquefy things.”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted, thinking back to the venom Grimesby Roylott had used on his stepdaughter (and also the back of my favorite jacket). Oh, and there was the unknown agent that had caused Eduardo Lucas’s torso to melt to stinking brown sauce. “But this man has not liquefied nearly to the extent of the other cases we have known.”

  “He probably would have, if he’d been boring,” said Holmes. “Yet remember: this man was half demon. The poison was not so potent against his interesting half.”

  “So then, this—” I flopped the rubbery, juice-filled arm of Bartholomew Sholto back and forth “—this would be a mild reaction?”

  “And perhaps you’d better not get any of that toxin on yourself, eh? Leave it, Watson. There have got to be other clues about.”

  It was an understatement such as only Holmes could craft. Dear reader, can I possibly describe the number of things that were wrong in that room? It might well be easier to describe the items that weren’t completely abnormal. The chair. The desk. The wallpaper. The rug. The door.

  Oh, wait… the door had recently been demon-blasted.

  Other than that, the room was singular. It was large, taking up the entire fl
oor above Mrs. Sholto’s vault. Each wall had one or two windows with heavy iron frames. These had been corroded shut by the miasma of vapors—both odorous and odious—that seeped forth from the collection of aged and leaky chemical tanks arranged about the walls. A coal-powered steam engine lay at the center of a room, connected to a gigantic leather bellows which was piped—by means of snaking rubber tubes—to some of the nearby gas tanks. Doubtless, this was how Mother’s “perfume” was pumped to the floor below. On the desk before Bartholomew lay a piece of paper with “THE SIGN OF NINE” scrawled on it. As the paper was fresh and uncreased, I believed it to have been a recent addition—probably left by the murderer. The desk also held a map of the house and grounds of Pondicherry Lodge, covered with red X’s marking places where the Agra treasure had been sought and missed.

  Also notable was the place where the Agra treasure had been found. Two stepladders stood beneath a hole in the ceiling, which had been hacked open using pickaxes, shovels, and no great art. The tools lay covered in plaster dust by the feet of the stepladders which—judging by the footprints in the dust—had seen a great deal of traffic in the last day or so. Climbing one of them, I stuck my head through the hole and up into the secret chamber where the Agra treasure had lain.

  It hardly seemed a worthy hiding place for such a precious item; unfinished walls led up to bare rafters and the dusty underside of Pondicherry Lodge’s roof. There was an access hatch leading out onto the roof, which—given the locked door and the corroded window frames—I instantly assumed to be the route of ingress for Bartholomew’s murderer. My own skills as a tracker were slight, yet the particulars of the situation were so plain—and so bizarre—that I could hardly fail to read them. I called Holmes up into the little attic to show him what I had found.

  “See this large, rectangular area where there is no dust? I think that is where the Agra treasure sat!”

  “Unless somebody with huge, box-shaped feet came in here and took exactly one step, I’d say you are correct,” Holmes agreed.

  “And look here, between the hatch in the roof and the area where the treasure lay. What do you make of that?”