There, on the pillow, was the pale, damp, feverish face of Sherlock Holmes.
CHAPTER VI
Among the Opium Eaters
What do you mean you don’t want to come with us?” said Mary. “You always want to come with us. And it’s opium dens.”
“Yes, and where are you going first?” asked Diana, leaning back into the sofa cushion as though she was not about to budge. Alpha was curled up on the sofa beside her. Mrs. Poole insists that cats are not allowed on the furniture. Evidently, the cats do not listen to Mrs. Poole any more than Diana does.
They were in the parlor, waiting for Justine to join them. She had insisted on checking Beatrice’s greenhouse to make sure some sort of plant, with a name Mary could not remember except that it reminded her of fingers, was flourishing where she had put it.
BEATRICE: That was the Digitalis purpurea, what you would call foxglove. It almost died while I was away.
CATHERINE: I don’t think our readers need to know that. This isn’t a horticultural manual.
BEATRICE: But it is always best to be precise, particularly with poisons.
“I told you, to see Kate Bright-Eyes,” said Mary. “I’ve never been inside an opium den, but one of the inmates of the Magdalen Society must have. She can tell us what to expect, and Kate can help us with our disguises. We want to look like habitual opium eaters, and I have no idea what that looks like.”
“I’m not going anywhere near that blasted society,” said Diana. “Never again. You can bloody well go without me. I told you those houses were opium dens, didn’t I, and gave you directions for where to find them? So I think I’ve done my bit. Anyway, who cares whether we find the Great Detective? If he can’t take care of himself, what good is he?”
Mary resisted the urge to slap her sister. “And what will you be doing all day while we’re gone?” she asked suspiciously. What mischief was Diana up to this time? First she had run off to Soho when she was supposed to stay home, and now when she was being offered a chance to participate, she refused to go. The girl was insufferable.
“I thought I would help Mrs. Poole scrub the kitchen range,” said Diana. “It’s very dirty, you know.” Her eyes were limpid pools of innocence in her freckled face.
Did she actually think that would fool anyone? Mary crossed her arms and waited. For a moment, the parlor was very quiet. Diana did not like silence—Mary had learned that the best way to get her to tell you something was to merely wait.
“All right, fine, if you must know,” said Diana impatiently. “The Baker Street boys aren’t allowed to look for Holmes, but no one said anything about Mrs. Raymond. Charlie says they’ll help us find her. They know every corner of London, so if anyone can find her, they can. And Wiggins says I can be in charge of the search. If they find her, they’ll also find Alice, and I can rescue her, just like I rescued Lucinda. I’ll have saved the day, as usual! And then we’ll send Mrs. Raymond to Newgate, where I hope she hangs.”
Diana looked very satisfied with herself, as though she had already accomplished this feat.
Should Diana be trying to find Mrs. Raymond among the slums of London with a bunch of street urchins and ragamuffins? But then, she would be as safe with the Baker Street boys as in opium dens, and perhaps their search would not find anything after all. Mary would rather they came up empty-handed than have Diana confront Mrs. Raymond by herself, as no doubt she would! In Diana’s mental world, Mrs. Raymond was a kind of demon incarnate.
“Oh, all right!” she said. “Go off with Charlie if you must. At least I’ll know you’re with him this time, which is better than running off without telling anyone. I wish you were helping Mrs. Poole scrub the kitchen range! She misses Alice terribly.”
“Archie can do that,” said Diana. “Can’t you, Archie?”
The Orangutan Man was standing at the parlor door.
“You rang, miss?” he said.
Had she? Oh yes, just a minute ago. In this verbal altercation with Diana, she had almost forgotten.
“Yes, could you fetch my coat and hat, please? And my purse—the black one.” It was large enough for her pistol. She did not want to go into an opium den unarmed.
He moved away in his awkward fashion, half the lope of an ape, half the walk of a man. And yet, Mary had to concede that he was an excellent footman—and maid, for he also did the work that Enid would have done, without once breaking the bibelots on the mantelpieces.
“Mary, I am ready.” Justine was standing in the doorway.
Mary looked at her judiciously. “Yes, you’ll do. I don’t know what it is exactly—perhaps that floppy purple beret and the matching cravat—but you look exactly like Punch’s idea of a degenerate artist.”
“Thank you,” said Justine. “They’re Beatrice’s. The cravat is actually one of her belts. I think they are a little feminine, but not so much that a gentleman would not wear them.”
BEATRICE: They are the clothing of the New Woman. They are meant not to be feminine, but practical.
CATHERINE: On women they look like men’s clothing, on men they look like women’s clothing. That’s where the New Woman meets the Dandy.
BEATRICE: Why is it necessary to categorize people in that fashion? Why can we not all wear whatever we wish, whatever is useful and aesthetically pleasing? I believe that someday we shall all wear garments that are light and of a pleasing texture, easy to put on and take off. At the same time, they will express the aspirations of the spirit. They will be like the garments of the Greeks, both graceful and functional. Why can we not dress in such a fashion now?
MRS. POOLE: Because this is England, and you would all catch your deaths of cold.
Mr. Justin Frank stared across the street at the perfectly ordinary house they knew to be an opium den. “You do not need to come in. I can do this by myself, if necessary.”
“Well, it’s not necessary,” said Mary crossly. “I’ll be fine. I just don’t feel comfortable looking like this, that’s all. What in the world would Mrs. Poole think?” She looked down at herself, wearing a cheap, shabby dress that revealed more of her décolletage than modesty would have dictated, despite the shawl she had wrapped about her shoulders. It had come from the storage room of the Magdalen Society, where the clothing of recent penitents were kept before being turned into rags. Kate Bright-Eyes had chosen it for her, and fixed her hair, and put rouge on her cheeks and lips as well as a little lampblack on her eyelashes. She was supposed to be a—well, a prostitute, there was no other way of saying it—accompanying Mr. Frank to an opium den. “I know you wanted to be a working woman, Miss Jekyll,” Kate had said. “But working women have better things to do with their time than smoke the pipe of sweet dreams. A woman of the profession—my profession that is—would accompany a gentleman there if she were paid to do it. The way to be least conspicuous is to accompany Mr. Frank as his, shall we say, paid companion, I assure you.” She had even put an artificial flower into Mr. Frank’s buttonhole to complete the effect.
How in the world did one act like a prostitute? Mary had no idea. All the ones she had met, like Kate and Doris, were simply ordinary women trying to get by without family to support them, or friends to offer them help, or the training required for more respectable employment. But she had never seen them in action, as it were, plying their disreputable trade. Well, she would have to do the best she could.
The door was opened by a perfectly ordinary woman, a shopkeeper’s wife perhaps, who asked what they wanted, but when Mr. Frank explained in hushed tones that they had come for the drug and put something that clinked in her hand, they were admitted into a chamber that looked as though it had been decorated for a theatrical performance set in the fabled, fantastical East. A “Chinaman” with a long beard, in an embroidered robe, greeted them by putting his hands together and bowing, then led them into a second chamber where, on low sofas and cushions spread on the floor, sat and sprawled dreamers in the land of Opium. They were gentlemen, most of them, with a few sailors an
d less reputable-looking fellows, as well as a few women who looked, Mary thought, thoroughly fallen indeed. Beyond was another room of dreamers, and another, three altogether. Dr. Watson was not in any of them.
“Well,” said Mary when they were once more standing outside on the street. “That was an experience.” She could still smell the sweet, cloying odor of the opium pipes. She felt a little sick. “On to the second address on Diana’s list.”
At the second address, only a few streets away, it was the same—the exotic rooms, the bowing Chinaman, who could have been a brother to the first, and rooms of men and a few women smoking opium pipes, lost in dreams.
The third had a beggar sitting out front, and when Mary saw him, she exclaimed, “Poor Richard!” Yes, it was the beggar who had spent the night beside the dead body of Molly Keane, the third victim in the Whitechapel Murders. He was looking just as ragged as the last time she had seen him, with a long multicolored scarf wound around his throat.
CATHERINE: Readers who do not remember Poor Richard should consult their copies of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, the first volume of these Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club. If they have not yet read that most excellent book, it is available for two shillings at booksellers and railway stations, or direct from the publisher.
MARY: Will you stop that, already?
“I seem to remember you from somewhere, lassie,” said Poor Richard, looking up at her. “But I don’t rightly know where. My memory ain’t what it used to be.”
“I was with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson,” she said. “I wasn’t dressed like this, and I don’t think we were ever introduced—I’m Mary Jekyll.” She leaned down and held out her hand. He shook it, looking searchingly up into her face. He had rheumy eyes and the veined, bulbous nose that accompanies a life of habitual drunkenness, but his smile was as gentle and gap-toothed as a child’s.
“Ah, that was a terrible morning, to find I’d been sleeping all night beside a corpse! It’s good to see you again, miss. You’ll be looking for Dr. Watson, then?”
“What do you know of Dr. Watson?” asked Justine. “Do you know his location—”
“Oh, aye,” said Poor Richard. “He’s here, in this den of iniquity, or house of merciful dreams as some calls it. Mr. Holmes said to me—Richard he said, I think they’ve discovered who I am, and if they have, then they’ll come for me, most likely tonight. You go tell Dr. Watson where you saw me, and tell him the man who kidnapped me is an old enemy of ours who we thought dead. Or something to that effect—I don’t remember his words exactly. He would not give me a note, he said, in case they found it on me. He wanted me to remember, despite my memory not being so good, as I said. So I went to find Dr. Watson, but I had a bit of a tipple first to get my courage up, and on the way to Baker Street a copper stopped me for begging and vagrancy, so I spent a week in prison before the warden got around to my case and realized it was me—we’re old friends, the warden and I. He said there was no harm in me, and anyway they needed the cell for another, so he let me go instead of sending me before the judge. Then I made my way over to Baker Street and told Dr. Watson what Mr. Holmes had told me, but I could not remember exactly where I had seen Mr. Holmes, except that it was one of the opium dens in this part of town. So I offered to lead Dr. Watson here, feeling badly for having forgotten which one I had seen Mr. Holmes in, and for being in gaol for a week, though it weren’t my fault. That was—it must have been yesterday, or maybe the day before that—I don’t rightly remember.”
“More than a week ago,” said Mary. Evidently, Poor Richard did not have a very firm grasp of time. That was when Dr. Watson had disappeared—he must have been going from opium den to opium den ever since, trying to find news of Mr. Holmes. Mary hoped Poor Richard was right and Watson was inside this particular establishment. The beggar might mean well, but his memory was not to be trusted. “An old enemy of ours, that we thought dead—whom could Mr. Holmes mean by that?” asked Mary. “Does it have something to do with the opium trade? Each of these houses seems to be run by a Chinaman.…”
“Oh, that’s just for show,” said Poor Richard. “Like them gold dragons on the walls and the Chinese furnishings. People expect a Chinaman, so the proprietor supplies them. It’s part of the image, you see. But all the opium houses in these streets belong to an Englishman—Colonel Moran, they call him. He’s a big fellow that looks as though he could break bones. He’s a toff, he is—I’ve seen him come down in his fancy brougham. I called him ‘Your Lordship’ once, hoping to get a few pennies. He said, ‘Out of my way,’ as though I weren’t nothing but a bit of refuse blowing about the streets, and his lieutenant pushed me so that I fell in the mud.” He looked as scornful as a fundamentally gentle man can look. “He makes a bundle out of these houses, I’ll be bound. A lot of gentlemen come here to forget themselves and their sorrows.”
“And you say Dr. Watson is inside this establishment?” said Justine.
“Indeed, and you’d best talk with him yourselves—I’ve told you all I know. I ain’t seen Mr. Holmes since that day he gave me the message for Dr. Watson.”
Mary had no money—she had given it all to Mr. Justin Frank, who was more likely to have a full purse than Mary Mulligan, which was the name she had chosen for herself. “Give him a shilling, won’t you?” she whispered to Justine, although if she was going to keep tipping informants at this rate, she would soon run out of money! Detecting was an expensive business. “And come on. We need to find Dr. Watson.”
MRS. POOLE: I cannot believe the two of you went into such a place! With all those men lying about on the floors and whatnot.
MARY: It really wasn’t that different from any gentlemen’s club, Mrs. Poole. Except for the lying on floors bit. Although they weren’t on floors, but on cushions mostly, the kind they call ottomans I think. But you could smell the opium—a thick, heavy smell.
MRS. POOLE: What your mother would think, I simply don’t know.
Once again they were greeted by a Chinaman, although this time instead of bowing silently he said, “Welcome, honorable visitors, to this humble house.” No doubt it was supposed to sound foreign, but his accent was decidedly cockney.
This opium den resembled the others, as though they had all been decorated by the same person who had been told to leave out no detail that could refer to the East, but in an even more sumptuous style. There were gilded sculptures of dragons guarding the doorways, and screens with dragons on them partitioning the rooms, and dragons embroidered on the cushions. The light was dim, the decor opulent, the air heavy with the smell of opium. Mary kept almost tripping over low tables on which were placed opium pipes, cups of tea without handles, and plates with a selection of biscuits and sweets. The clientele was well dressed: These were gentlemen, for the most part. Of course, working men could not afford such a place, nor the release that opium provides.
“He’s not here,” said Justine, looking around the first room and behind the screens. “We must venture deeper.”
Dr. Watson was not in the second room, either, but in the third room—there he sat, looking dejected, next to a fair-haired man from whose fingers dangled an opium pipe. Mary was so relieved to see him that she almost forgot her disguise. But no, she must remain Mary Mulligan, at least for now. It would not do to call out to him, and he could not see them—he was looking steadily at the floor, and talking to the fair man in low tones.
Mary walked across the room and sat down next to him on an ottoman. “Hello, love,” she said in what she hoped was a convincing Whitechapel accent but was probably not—our Mary is not very good at accents.
MARY: I did the best I could! I’m sorry that I’m not as good at acting as Diana. I’m not used to lying about myself.
Dr. Watson looked up at her, startled. But he looked even more startled when he saw her face and recognized Miss Mary Jekyll, of 11 Park Terrace, under the rouge and lampblack.
“I’m Mary Mulligan,” she said rapidly, before he could make
a fuss. “And this is Mr. Justin Frank, who brought me here. He’s a friend of yours, remember?”
“Of course, of course,” said Dr. Watson, looking up at Justine. “This is Mr. Gray.” He gestured toward the fair-haired man who was looking at them curiously. When Mary saw his face, she was startled by its youth and beauty. He had a look of perfect innocence, as though a vile or unworthy thought had never entered his head. What was he doing in a place like this? “He has been providing me with information. I am not partaking of the drug, I assure you. I am here trying to locate Holmes, who has been missing for some time. I’ve looked for him in several of these places—this is the first time I have been able to hear anything of him. But what are you doing back from—well, this is not the time. Mr. Gray, this is Miss Mary Mulligan. She is also an associate of Mr. Holmes.”
“Is she now?” said Mr. Gray, looking at her curiously, no doubt wondering why Mr. Holmes would have such an associate. He glanced at Justine, and his eyes widened just a little, as though in surprise.
“What sort of information?” asked Mary. She looked around—no one seemed to be paying attention to them. Could they talk freely here? She was not sure. And who was Mr. Gray? Was he involved in this matter somehow?
“Sir, if you’ll take a seat,” said Mr. Gray to Justine, indicating a place beside him on the ottoman. He smiled—it was a particularly engaging smile—and his eyes expressed frank admiration. Well, Justine did make a particularly handsome man, after all! Mary, a little annoyed to be overlooked, sat down on the other side of Watson.
“Among other things, he has told me that Holmes was here more than a week ago, and that he left in the company of the proprietor of the place—and not willingly.”
“The proprietor?” said Mary. “Do you know who he is? Poor Richard told us he was not the Chinaman who greeted us at the door, but an Englishman—a Colonel Moran.”
Mr. Gray gave a low laugh. “That Chinaman isn’t even Chinese, although he enjoys playing the part. Mr. Bintang is from Sumatra, although he’s lived in London for twenty years. He goes by Bobby and plays cricket on his days off. And no, Moran is merely an agent of a higher and more sinister power. The proprietor is a man named Moriarty, who styles himself a professor, and a poisonous man he is. Moran is simply his chief henchman. I would not come here myself—but it’s one of the few places in London where I’m still welcome.”
The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl Page 12
