Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine

by G. S. Denning

  According to later reports, Grogsson’s cry of joy could be heard as far away as Brighton.

  10

  THE NIGHT WAS DARK, BECAUSE… WELL… NIGHTS ARE.

  The air was moist and cold for so early in the season. Great tendrils of fog reached out across the Thames, turning her into a moonlit ribbon of vapor. I could hear the lapping of water against Long Arm’s side, though the fog was so dense I could not see the ripples. Holmes sat with me at the bow, staring across the Thames with that still, tense focus he could gather at times like these. Towards the stern stood an entire elite team of coal-stokers. That is to say: Grogsson with his shirt off. But really, I cannot imagine the five-man crew that could possibly have bested him. Just ahead of him sat Lestrade, fussing over the cluster of expensive gauges that told him how hot the fire was, how hot the boiler water was, how fast we were going, and how likely we were to explode. Beside him, at the wheel, stood Inspector Stanley Hopkins. After all, if he were to be one of us, this was the sort of night he needed to be involved in.

  Grogsson tipped another shovelful of coal into the furnace. I winced to see it. If we wished to move off at a moment’s notice we had to keep steam up, but the boiler was large, and that made our furnace hungry. Long Arm was designed for speed, not longevity. To sit for so many hours, just waiting for our prey to move, was sapping our limited coal supply. Holmes must have noticed my anxiety, for he asked, “See anything, Watson?”

  I raised my binoculars. Did I see anything? Of course. Rather a lot of fog. I could just make out the lights of Wilhelm Edelbrock’s Oversized Coal-Chute-atorium on the far bank. Through the grimy windows, I could make out occasional movement. But was it old Edelbrock, or our quarry? At this distance, I had no hope of telling. We had a spy on that side of the river, but what if he’d fallen asleep? Or smelled some irresistible butcher’s scraps and taken off for a quick meal?

  I should have had more faith in him. As I peered through the binoculars, a scarlet flare arched up into the sky, turning the surrounding fog into a glowing pink haze.

  Then a green flare.

  Then a yellow one.

  “Wiggles’s signal!” Holmes cried.

  “You don’t think you two might have picked something a bit more subtle?” I complained.

  “It’s done the job, Watson,” Holmes countered. “We saw them, didn’t we?”

  “Yes. Everybody did,” I said, as two purple rockets flew into the air, followed by another red one. “Unless the Aurora is crewed by colossal fools, I imagine they now know something is afoot.”

  Yet Holmes had no answer except to cry, “Oh, pretty! Blue one!”

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “Grogsson, Lestrade, how long?”

  “Hrragh!” said Grogsson, heaving a massive scoop of coal into the furnace. He swung the door closed, locking in the heat.

  Lestrade stared down at his collection of dials. “Temperature is good… We’re boiling… Pressure is coming up…”

  “So we can go?” I urged.

  “No, no. The turbine needs to come up to speed, once we have pressure, that is.”

  “Turbine? What is that? Do you mean those long metal sticks that go ‘chuff-chuff ’?”

  “Pistons?” Lestrade laughed. “Pistons? Ha! We might as well row. Perhaps pistons are good enough for your average Steem poseur, but we’ve got something better. Listen to this!”

  He triumphantly threw one of his levers forward. A slow, grinding noise emerged from the cylindrical casing, just in front of the boiler. Aaaaaaand…

  That was about all.

  “What is it doing?” I asked.

  Lestrade shrugged. “It has a fairly heavy flywheel. It will take some time to come up to speed.”

  “But, but… I can’t even see the Aurora!” I complained. “If she knows we’re coming, she might disappear into the fog on the far side of the river! Get this useless tub moving!”

  Grogsson gave an angry snort and for just a moment I feared I was going to end my days floating in the Thames with a coal-shovel dent in my skull. But Holmes gave my arm a calming pat and said, “I’m sure our official friends know what they’re doing, Watson. See? I can hear the turbine getting faster, can’t you?”

  He was right. The slow grind had been replaced by a rhythmic scrape-scrape-scrape, which grew in speed as he spoke, to a constant blather of white noise. I looked eagerly down at the fog-shrouded waters and observed, “We still aren’t moving.”

  “Of course not,” said Lestrade. “The clutch is disengaged. The turbine is connected to the boiler, but not the propeller screw.”

  “Well can we connect them?”

  “Very nearly. Is everybody ready?”

  Hopkins gave a grim nod and tightened both hands on the wheel. Grogsson smiled and crouched down behind the furnace. Holmes reached forward and grasped one of the wires that stretched along the perimeter of the bow.

  “Here we go,” said Lestrade, and tipped a second lever forward. Long Arm gave a tortured, mechanical shriek, and leapt forward. So did my feet, which were placed firmly on her deck. My head and body, which sort of weren’t, sort of didn’t. My legs were out from under me in an instant. If I’d been standing near the stern, I’m sure I would have gone into the water. Instead, I found myself bouncing over the deck as Long Arm sped by beneath me. Indeed, the entire craft might have gone by and left me gasping in the Thames, were it not for the turbine-casing that slammed into me and equalized our momentum.

  “Ow! Ow! It’s hot!” I cried.

  “Hmm. Yes. I believe the term ‘steam’ has been mentioned once or twice,” said Lestrade, failing to keep a tinge of satisfaction from his voice.

  Struggling to my knees and away from the searing-hot machinery, I peeked out over the gunwale. There was little doubt we were moving now. Fog rolled off the bow as we shot through the water. How wide the river had always seemed to me, and how daunting a chore to cross it. Yet at our current pace it seemed as if it might be an all-tooeasily accomplished task.

  “Turn!” I shouted.

  “Yes. Probably a good idea,” Holmes agreed. “Hard to port, Hopkins.”

  The diminutive inspector swung the wheel and we heeled left, sending a wall of spray up on our starboard. I nearly lost my footing again. By God, when had boats become so good? Long Arm turned her nose downstream. Holmes was beaming, as was Grogsson of course. Hopkins—standing at the wheel of such a marvel—how could he not smile as well? Even the perpetually dour visage of Vladislav Lestrade cracked into a grin and, despite my crop of fresh bruises, I’m sure mine did as well.

  What a night!

  What a ride!

  As I reflected on the wonder of it, we burst forth from a fog bank into the clear, cold air of the London night. Holmes jabbed one finger straight out in front of us and cried, “There she is! The Aurora!”

  She was just steaming out of the other side of the clear patch we’d steamed into. She must have been well over two hundred yards ahead of us, but in the naked moonlight we caught a glimpse of her gaudy blue hull and her “Wozza!” cartoon. Wiggles’s signal had clearly not gone unnoticed, for we could just make out two figures on her stern, feverishly shoving coal into her furnace. That queer clarity of sound over water brought the chuff-chuff-chuff of her pistons to our ears. Later testimony would bear out present observation that the Aurora was a worthy adversary. She had a reputation as a proper flier.

  Nothing like Long Arm, though. Even at that first glance before she disappeared into the fog, it was clear: we had the better of her.

  “Quick, lads! Into that fog bank!” I howled.

  Grogsson wrenched open the furnace door and heaved two shovels of coal in. I heard the whoosh-whoosh as the flames kicked higher and felt our pace increase. Had I called this craft a useless tub just a few minutes before? Shame on me. Had I doubted the value of a steam turbine? Double shame. Why, in that moment, I could have turned about and kissed the thing.

  Which would have scalded my lips right off…

/>   But you know what I mean.

  In hardly more than a minute, we were plunging into the fog. Ahead of us, I could just make out the bobbing yellow lamp that swung from the Aurora’s stern and the orange glow of her furnace. I raised the binoculars to see if I could make out any more, but no. The problem was not distance, but fog. All I achieved was to narrow my focus, much more than I ought.

  “Probably turn again,” Holmes advised, “so we don’t hit that big gray thing.”

  “Hit what?” Hopkins asked, but then added, “Aaaaaaaugh!” and spun the wheel hard to port again.

  Lestrade cursed in Romanian and pulled first this lever and then that one, disengaging the prop, selecting reverse, and re-engaging. Our wake turned to churning froth as the screw clawed backwards against the not-insignificant forward momentum of our craft.

  “What in…? What is that?” I cried out, as the gray wall of fog before us solidified into a gray wall of wood. Though our course was changing and our pace slowing, it was still a near-run thing. We came so close I might have reached out over the starboard rail and touched it.

  It was a barge.

  In fact, it was one of three barges being towed in a line in the middle of the night by a nondescript tugboat running with no lights. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the tug and all three of the barges she pulled had been painted the exact color of London’s famous fog.

  Grogsson stuck his chin out at her and opined, “Smug’lar, I bet.”

  “Hmm. What do you think she’s hauling?” Holmes wondered.

  Hopkins gave a low whistle. “Whatever it is, she’s got a lot of it.”

  “Never mind!” I shouted. “Just get around her!”

  As we rounded the bow of the tug, Innsmouth, a gray face with a mat of gray hair topped with a battered gray fisherman’s cap popped up over the rail to stare at us. I will swear there was something wrong with the man—that the skin was too gray, that his eyes were not simply yellowed by age and bad living, but may have been slightly luminous. I shook my fist at him as we passed and called, “Do you realize how lucky you just got, you little bastard? On any other night, I’m sure this boat full of policemen and paranormal investigators would be very interested in finding out what you were up to! Do you hear me? Any other night!”

  As we no longer had sight of the Aurora, we had no choice but to point our nose straight downstream and pour on speed. Grogsson went to work in earnest, shoveling pile after pile of our precious coal to the furnace.

  “Careful,” Lestrade called back to him. “Don’t melt her.”

  Before we even cleared the fog bank, I could see innumerable possible targets. London had no shortage of lights, both on the water and the shore. But which was the Aurora? I half feared she’d backed off steam in the fog and simply let us shoot by, or lain to close to shore to make herself invisible against the multitude of moored watercraft. But no. As Holmes and I scanned the thousands of lights, I saw one yellow one suddenly dip and disappear.

  “There!” I yelled. “She just threw her lantern overboard. Ha! Poorly timed, Mordecai Smith. We’re back on you now!”

  And so we were. Perhaps she might do without her lantern, but since the Aurora’s furnace opened towards the rear of the craft, they could not hide the orange glow of her fires. And as fast as she was, we were faster. At Greenwich, her furnace was nothing more than a dim light in the distance. By the time we reached Blackwall we could see her crew clearly.

  “Look at that fellow stagger about,” I shouted to Holmes, pointing. “That’s our peg-leg, I bet.”

  Holmes nodded. “And a fairly big box he’s got with him, too. Can you see what he’s doing with it?”

  I could not, even with the binoculars. “No. He’s gone to the other side of the boiler; I’ve lost sight of him.”

  “Look at the little fellow, though,” Holmes laughed. “He doesn’t look like he’s very pleased to see us, eh?”

  No indeed. He was crouched down behind the stern, wrapped in a black cloak. I could make out some of his face; his skin was very dark and his eyes darker still. When the Aurora steamed into a patch of moonlight, I got a good look at him, staring back at us with an expression that—even at this distance—could never be mistaken for friendly. Just behind him, a pair of men labored with shovels, piling every lump of coal they could find into the howling orange furnace. Their family resemblance was unmistakable: Mordecai and James Smith, probably regretting the day they’d sold off all three of their serviceable launches to get one really fast one.

  The Aurora had left the main flow of the river by then, hugging the southern bank. Finally, with Barking Level on our one side and the Plumstead Marshes on the other, we drew within four boat lengths. It was then that the smallest member of their crew jumped up on the stern and threw off his cloak.

  “What the hell is that?” Hopkins cried.

  The little figure who rose to challenge us was… well… not quite a tree. His skin was brown and knotted—more like wood or bark than hide. His eyes were black angry circles. He stretched both arms out towards us and pointed horrible, thorny fingers in our direction.

  There was a little pop.

  A second later, something whizzed past me.

  “Get down!” I cried to Holmes.

  But he only laughed in joy and pointed at our diminutive assailant. “Watson! Fingers! He’s shooting his fingers at us!”

  There was a further pop pop followed by two little whizzes. Whatever else, he was an accurate little bugger.

  “Look out, Holmes!”

  “But… does it hurt, do you think? Do they grow back? Or if he shoots too many, will he never be able to play piano again? Or—”

  “Holmes, remember what one of those fingers did to Bartholomew Sholto?”

  “Oh! Right. Best do something, eh?”

  I already had the Webley out of my pocket and braced against the wire that stretched across our prow. The boat bumped and shuddered through the waves, but I had him fairly steadily in my sights. I didn’t want to kill anybody. In fact, I didn’t even want to make the noise of a shot, but what choice did I have? I squeezed the trigger and felt the pistol buck against my hand. Did I hit him? Did I see that bullet knock a chip out of his shoulder? I’ll never know for sure.

  Because Holmes—in moments of great stress or distraction—had a tendency to forget our desire for anonymity. Despite the presence of the Smiths, of Hopkins and any number of observers on shore, he threw both hands to the sky and cried, “Azazel! Attend me!”

  Three bolts of purple hellfire materialized behind him and flew in howling arcs towards the Aurora. The first struck the little tree-man in the center of the chest and blasted straight through him. Poor little fellow. I mean, yes, he’d just been trying to murder me, but I could not help but feel a pang of sympathy as he crumpled forward and splashed into the Thames. Oh, and he had one important property that distinguished him from wood: he didn’t float. The second bolt struck the Aurora’s stern, just above the waterline. It must have exited through the bottom of her hull, for the water on her starboard side flashed bright purple and she listed towards it. The final bolt struck the Aurora’s boiler, which proved exactly how far modern launches had improved by not exploding. A great plume of steam gushed up into the air as the motive force of the Aurora’s chrome heart vented uselessly skyward.

  “Ha!” I cried. “We’ve got her now! Lestrade, try to lower our speed won’t you, or we’ll run right into her. Hopkins, bring us a bit… um… port? I can’t remember. That way.”

  I pointed the way I wished to go. (And to my credit—yes, it was port.) Yet the boat failed to respond.

  “Hopkins? Can you bring her that way?”

  “Uh… no. Don’t think I can’t. Er… think I can…”

  With growing dread, I turned. At the wheel stood Hopkins. He’d grown quite pale. He seemed unsteady on his feet. He had a look of confusion upon his face and a four-inch wood-like splinter protruding from the center of his forehead.

/>   “Oh!” cried Holmes and I together.

  Holmes leaned in towards Hopkins, spread his hands and said, “Now, stay calm. Stay still. Let’s assess the situation and see if there’s anything we can do to—”

  Hopkins was just beginning to nod his agreement, when a great retching noise burst forth from between his lips.

  Followed by a huge gout of vomit.

  Followed by all his internal organs.

  When it was finally done, Stanley Hopkins gave us a relieved look, reached up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then tipped forward and fell apart into a great burst of chunky juice, with bones in it.

  “Oh, come on, Hopkins!” Holmes complained. “How am I supposed to fix that? There is a bloody limit you know, and I fear you’ve passed it. Oh, by the twelve gods… Look at this mess… You’ve got yourself all over my shoes, too.” He shook his head and turned to me. “Well, now I suppose it’s even more important to change your destiny, eh, Watson? I don’t think your handy-dandy walking doom-sponge is going to be able to absorb much more punishment on your behalf.”

  “Wait! Holmes! Is Inspector Hopkins still soul-bound to me?”

  “Well… until about twelve seconds ago. Did you think it was mere coincidence that you’ve come to no harm these past weeks, despite putting yourself in harm’s way over and over, and making terrible decisions, and failing to have even the slightest care for self-preservation? Oh, speaking of which… should one of us be at the wheel?”

  He wasn’t wrong. Despite Lestrade’s efforts to slow us, we were in real danger of colliding with the Aurora or running aground. The reedy bank was very near us now. We’d entered the Plumstead waste, where the land sloped towards the Thames so gently and had so much standing water on its surface that it was the matter of some debate where the ground ended and the river began. Still, I was in no mood to find out. With a yelp, I rose and splashed through the puddle of Hopkins to grab the wheel. I flung it left just in time. The stricken Aurora slid past on our right.