by Eric Brown
Later that day we climbed from a cab at Willow Avenue and hurried up the garden path to the terraced cottage.
A young woman of pixie-like proportions and a suspicious mien opened the door a cautious six inches and peered out at us.
At Holmes’s hurried introductions, she smiled, gave her name as Lily Lenton and ushered us within. “Mr Holmes, Dr Watson. Freya told me all about your exploits, and mentioned that you might be back.”
“And Miss Fairfield?” I enquired. “She is well, I trust?”
“She is, all things considered. She is resting at the moment.”
“I take it that Miss Hamilton-Bell left without mishap?” Holmes said.
“She departed for Battersea at ten this morning,” Miss Lenton said. “She gave me a note to pass on to you.”
She crossed to the crowded mantelshelf and slipped a white envelope from behind a carriage clock, handing it to Holmes. He read the note quickly and passed it to me.
In a beautiful copperplate hand, she wrote:
Dear Mr Holmes and Dr Watson,
These are a few lines in appreciation of everything you have done for the cause, not least of which is the saving of Miss Fairfield’s life. I hope to see you again in a fortnight, when we might together celebrate the liberation of our world. In the event of my not surviving this mission, however, I would like you to carry on the fight regardless, and be assured that I met my end doing the only thing possible in the circumstances; to wit, attempting to ensure that our world is one day free of the accursed Arkana.
Your ever humble servant,
Freya Hamilton-Bell.
I refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope, quite moved, and turned my attention to what my friend was telling Miss Lenton about our meeting with the Martian ambassador. He withdrew the Martian document from his coat pocket and passed it to her.
She scanned the list of names and shook her head, her eyes wide with shock. “But… but I know both Emmeline and Emily – we met in the Movement” – by this I took her to mean the Suffragette Movement – “when I was just sixteen.” She touched her throat with tiny, childlike fingers. “I am shocked, sirs. I knew that the Martian presence on Earth was more than iniquitous, but little did I realise…”
“I will leave the list with you,” Holmes said. “Perhaps it would be wise if we were to return here tomorrow? If you could gather members of the Resistance so that we might coordinate the task of informing the intended victims, that would be more than helpful.”
“I will do that, Mr Holmes,” she said. “Perhaps if we arrange to meet here at three tomorrow afternoon?”
This duly agreed upon, I excused myself and went upstairs. I knocked on the bedroom door and upon hearing a summons entered to find Miss Fairfield sitting up in bed, a portable writing table propped on a cushion before her. She looked radiant as she smiled at me, with her mass of gypsy-dark hair and intense charcoal eyes. Her ordeal of the day before might have been a month behind her.
“Why, Dr Watson, this is an unexpected pleasure.”
“Must look in on one’s ward,” I said. “You’re looking well, my dear.”
“I am very well, thanks to you and Mr Holmes. To think…” She shook her head, her handsome brow buckling in consternation at the thought of what had occurred yesterday.
I sat beside the bed. “Best not to dwell on what might have been,” I counselled. “All that’s in the past. Fact is, you’re safe now.”
“I would never have gone willingly with Smith,” she said. “But…”
“He was blackmailing you, I take it? Holmes and I suspected as much.”
“He intercepted a letter I wrote to Herbert, in which I mentioned the night of the… the incident with the former ambassador. Mr Smith suggested that it would be wise for me to accompany him to Woking, and once we arrived at the institute… he drugged me and… and oh, it was terrible!”
“There, there…” I soothed. I took her pulse, finding it normal, and changed the subject. “I take it that Mr Wells has visited?”
She coloured prettily. “He called yesterday evening.” She pointed to a bunch of daffodils on the bedside table. “I told him that I would have preferred a good book, but thanked him anyway. He said that you had convinced him of the perfidy of the Martians, and his conversation with Freya last night only served to stiffen his resolve to join her cause. He is due here again at eight.”
“Holmes and I have much to do before the day is out,” I said, hearing footsteps on the stairs. “I’ll let you get back to your writing.”
Holmes appeared in the doorway, enquired after Miss Fairfield’s well-being, then said to me, “It’s time we were making tracks, Watson.”
“Quite,” I said, taking Miss Fairfield’s hand and telling her that we would drop in again tomorrow.
“Oh – there is one thing, Doctor, Mr Holmes,” she said, waylaying us as we were about to leave. “About… about what happened yesterday. According to what Freya told me, I am given to understand that Mr Moriarty was endeavouring to make a… a simulacrum copy of me? Can that be true?”
“I am afraid so,” said Holmes.
She looked nonplussed. “A copy? But why on earth…?”
Holmes explained that the vainglorious Professor Moriarty wanted someone to act as his biographer, someone to put a positive gloss on his lifetime’s misdeeds.
“And,” she asked, “do you know if he succeeded in duplicating me?”
I looked at Holmes, who said, “As the duplication process finished just prior to our escape from the institution, it would appear that he did indeed succeed.”
Her eyes clouded. “Oh, to think,” she murmured, “that somewhere out there…”
“Try not to dwell on that,” I said, and indicated her writing table. “Continue with your work, then take my advice and get some rest, hm? That’s the spirit!”
We withdrew, made our farewells to Miss Lenton, then hurried to the High Street where we caught a cab to Hackney.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A Public Meeting Interrupted
We arrived at the assembly rooms half an hour before the speakers were due to take the stage. A goodly crowd was already gathered in the hall and citizens were still flocking in from the street. Those assembled, I noted, comprised a wide cross-section of society, from flat-capped workers to bowler-hatted city gents, alongside a number of bonneted women in the audience. Above the stage, a great banner proclaimed, Citizens Against Martian Rule!
“My word, Holmes, there must be at least two hundred in the audience!”
“Approximately three hundred and twenty,” said my friend. “All the seats are taken, and there are ten rows of thirty seats. Some twenty men and women are standing at the back of the hall.”
He made his way to the stage, where an official in a bowler hat and a high, starched collar was arranging chairs behind a table.
Holmes caught the man’s attention and showed his card. “Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. It is urgent that we speak with Mr Shaw and Mr Chesterton immediately.”
The official looked at his pocket watch. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, sir. They always cut it fine. Mr Shaw will be at his club, fortifying himself with carrot juice as we speak. You might find G.K. across the road in the Marquis of Granby, quenching his thirst.”
“To the Granby, Watson,” Holmes said, taking my arm and almost pulling me from the stage.
We pushed our way through a press of eager citizens still piling into the hall, emerged into the evening sunlight, and crossed the road to the public house.
We found Chesterton ensconced in a mahogany nook to the rear of the snug, a foaming pint before him and three empty glasses nearby testifying to his thirst. He was tucking into a huge, sizzling sausage as we joined him, feeding it into his mouth from a greasy newspaper poke. He was a large-boned man in his late thirties, with a heavy face running to fat, decorated with an unkempt moustache flecked with sausage grease and beer foam.
�
�Holmes!” Chesterton called out. “A surprise and a delight, sir!”
My friend introduced me. “An honour, Dr Watson!” Chesterton said. “You will join me in a drink? I can heartily recommend the porter.”
“We must speak on a matter of urgency, G.K.,” Holmes said. “I’m afraid that time is pressing—”
Chesterton waved this away. “They’ll wait, old man. What’s five minutes between friends? And it isn’t as if they’ve never heard what we’ve got to say. D’you know, Holmes, I sometimes wonder if the game is worth the candle – if we’re merely spouting hot air to keep the idle entertained. I sometimes think the Martians are here to stay, y’know?”
“It is that which I wish to speak to you about,” Holmes began, but Chesterton paid him little heed and, chewing on his sausage, said, “Dr Watson, I’ve read your tales in The Strand, and fine they are too—”
“G.K.!” Holmes said, becoming irate. “Please, listen to me. You’re in danger—”
“Danger?” Chesterton blinked. “But we are all in danger of damnation, sir. Our souls are perilously and precariously balanced between salvation and temptation, between the ills of this world and the promise of the next.” He quaffed half a pint in three gargantuan gulps and held aloft his glass to the publican for a refill.
“The danger,” Holmes said, “is the Martians.”
The publican duly ferried over another brimming pint. “And it is a danger I have been warning the world about for nigh on a decade,” Chesterton said. “The perfidy of that Godless horde!”
He was interrupted by a rapping on the window at the far end of the room, and we looked up to see the sharp features of a ginger-bearded George Bernard Shaw peering querulously through the pane. He raised his wristwatch to the window and tapped the timepiece meaningfully with a long forefinger.
In playful salutation, Chesterton raised his pint to the playwright and accounted for half its measure.
Shaw vanished, only for his lanky frame to push through the door and make for our table, his motion given impetus by the way he leaned forward from the waist.
“Sirs,” he nodded to Holmes and myself. “G.K., loath though I am to frequent such premises, I really must impress upon you the need to drink up. It’s five to the hour and we speak at eight.”
Holmes rose to his feet and gripped Shaw’s tweed-clad arm. “Sir, as I’ve been trying to inform G.K., I’m here on an errand of utmost urgency. Your lives are in imminent danger.”
Shaw’s piercing blue eyes regarded Holmes with incredulity. “Danger? What’s all this…?” he began.
Chesterton said, “You’ll have no luck attempting to save Shaw’s soul, my friend. The Fenian is a heathen.”
“It’s not your souls I’m trying to save, both of you – but your skins. Now please listen to me,” Holmes went on. “The Martians wish you dead. The fact of the matter is that they have tired of your opposition, and have arranged for your assassination and that of other like-minded opponents to their rule.”
Shaw took a seat and stared at Holmes. Even Chesterton was silent now, chewing somewhat lugubriously on his sausage.
“And when might the attempt on our lives take place?” Shaw asked.
“The Martians will abduct you at ten this evening and take you to Woking, where you will be duly despatched.”
“At ten, you say?” Chesterton asked, peering myopically at his pocket watch. “But that’s two hours away, and we have an audience to entertain.”
The worse for the consumption of five pints, Chesterton rose to his full height, swayed from side to side until he gained his land legs, then surged from the table and made for the door.
I gripped Shaw’s arm. “For pity’s sake, sir, try to talk sense into him, I implore you!”
Shaw unfolded his thin frame from the table and hurried after Chesterton, waving his cane as he went. They left the public house and we gave chase, Holmes muttering imprecations beneath his breath. Chesterton was already halfway across the road, breasting the traffic with the wind in his cape like a full-masted galleon on the high seas, with Shaw trailing in his wake. We dodged between cars and horse-drawn cabs and followed the scribes as they trotted down an alleyway next to the assembly rooms and entered the building through a side door.
I followed Holmes along a drab corridor, then through a swing door, which gave onto the wings of the stage. We stopped there, hidden from the audience, and watched with impatience as Chesterton barrelled onto the stage to a vigorous round of applause, followed by a flustered Shaw.
The bowler-hatted official glanced at his watch with relief, rose to his feet, and as Chesterton and Shaw took their seats at the table, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure this evening to introduce two of the country’s finest men of letters…”
The crowd broke into another deafening round of applause as Chesterton rose to his feet, clutched his lapels with beefy fists, and peered into the auditorium through his pince-nez.
“What now?” I hissed.
“Our hands are tied.” Holmes looked at his watch. “It is a little after eight. The meeting is scheduled to finish at nine.” He stroked his chin, fretting. “Reluctant though I am to take them back to Baker Street, that would be one way of proving to the dunderheads that they’re in mortal danger.”
“By showing them our simulacra shells?”
“Precisely. But we’ll be cutting it fine, what with the ambassador sending a car at ten.”
He fell silent and turned his attention to the stage.
Chesterton was in full oratorical flow. “And yes, we have had our differences in the past: I find my esteemed friend’s socialism entirely suspect, for it cannot give the people what they need—”
At this point Shaw interrupted, with a mischievous glint in his Irish eyes, “While capitalism, my learned friend, gives people what they do not need!”
“As you know,” Chesterton continued, as if reading from a script they had played out many times before, “I am no proponent of capitalism – but let me not get started on the manifold virtues of distributism. We are here tonight, Shaw and I, united despite our differences – yes, speaking as one mind – against the greatest danger this country, nay, the world at large, has ever faced. And that danger is the odious oppression of the beings from the fourth planet, the red planet – and I sometimes wonder, my friends, at the etymology of that sobriquet: is it solely to do with the hue of the soil, or does it have other, more sinister, connotations?”
As he went on, setting out his philosophical and economical opposition to the occupation of the Martians, I became aware of a stirring towards the back of the hall. Two silent figures had entered the chamber, and more and more of the audience were turning to stare at the latecomers. A murmur of comment swept through the gathering, the murmur turning to a babble, which soon threatened to drown out the speaker.
I took my friend’s arm. “Good God, Holmes!”
A great hush settled over the audience, and even Chesterton had spluttered into silence.
All eyes were on the new arrivals.
Two squat, tentacled Martians stood at the rear of the hall, staring with their inscrutable, jet-black eyes. Their presence had a strange effect on the atmosphere in the auditorium: it was as if the temperature had plummeted by ten degrees. The silence stretched, and with it the tension.
Shaw glanced at us in the wings, concern showing in his bright blue eyes. Holmes raised a cautious forefinger, as if counselling against precipitate action at this juncture, and Shaw gave a minimal nod.
The practised raconteur that he was, Chesterton adapted his oration to the circumstances. “Am I given to understand that what was billed to be a public address has become, with the arrival of our august occupiers, a debate? If so, sirs, then pray join us on the stage. I am eager to hear what you might have to say, and to hear you out with interest… Sirs, please accept my invitation.”
The audience stared at the Martians in spellbound silence. The aliens turned to each othe
r and I saw their mouthpieces open and shut. Then one Martian remained at the back of the hall, looking on, while the other shuffled on its writhing tentacles down the central aisle and climbed the six wooden steps to the stage. He rounded the table and stood between Chesterton and Shaw. The bowler-hatted official, with trembling fingers, adjusted the microphone to the Martian’s height and rapidly retreated.
I glanced at Holmes. “What the devil can the creature want?” I whispered.
Chesterton, seated now, leaned forward. “You have us at a disadvantage, sir. Your name, if I might make so bold?”
The Martian leaned towards the microphone. “I am Tavor-Borima-Venn, military attaché to your esteemed kingdom.”
“We welcome you to the stage,” Chesterton said. “I don’t know whether you arrived in time to hear my argument—”
Tavor-Borima-Venn interrupted. “I am well aware of the gist of your polemic. Do you think we are in ignorance of the thoughts of those that oppose our presence here?”
“Sir, I am unable to fathom the depths of your ignorance,” Chesterton said, to nervous laughter from the audience, “though if you are cognisant of our argument, then you must surely have a counter-argument, which I am eager to hear.”
I glanced at my watch. It was eight-fifteen. I wondered how long this pantomime might last, and wondered too why the military attaché had seen fit to attend the meeting. Had the ambassador become suspicious of Holmes and myself, and sent the attaché along to ensure that we carry out his instructions?
The Martian spoke. His English was impeccable in its eloquence, though with a gravelly note which added a certain menace to his words.
“We, my race, the people you know as Martians, came to your world twelve years ago in the spirit of conciliation, after a schism of our kind – a criminal minority – had invaded Earth. But I have no need to detail what you already know. What I do need to stress, and will do so, is the spirit of peace and cooperation which my kind, the Arkana, extend to the people of Earth. It is an undeniable fact that in the twelve years of our presence here, we have showered untold technological and scientific gifts upon mankind, making the material lot of the average citizen far better—”
