Bogh-Harrat, the Bog-Hearted Boggart of Ballarat, did not seem to appreciate being spoken to in such tones. The rocks hovered up once more, ready to renew their onslaught.
I had no idea what to do.
Holmes, however, did.
How should one handle a Shakespeare-ish fairy? With Shakespeare-ish threats.
Holmes straightened to his full height and let the sonorous tones roll out of him, as he spake:
“I see you, oh unlustrous, knavish sprite!
I think not well of what you do today—
A callous sport of flinging baleful stones
And chasing all my noble friends away.
But hear me ere you chance your foolish game
And learn of me the fearsome hidden cost
That will perforce bring on you such sharp grief
If thou continue doing what thou dost.
Yay, I shall blight the stone and damn the earth
With seedling discontent and rotting wroth!
The mare shall heed no more the shrieking foal
And lovers change their hearts and break their troth!
The apricocks and dew leaves cancre’ous waste.
The field no longer furrow to the hoe.
Then all the fey shall name thee with the blame
And shake this weary valley with their woe!”
Around us, the hovering rocks bobbed indecisively for a moment.
Then, a moment more.
After a time, the disembodied speaker said, “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh no?” Holmes countered. “You just keep on misbehaving, mister, and see what you get!”
“Argh…” said the voice from all around us, “…fine.”
All the rocks fell lifelessly to the floor.
Including the one that had been silently maneuvering itself up above Holmes in the hope of dashing down on him unexpectedly. It plummeted from the ceiling onto Holmes’s right foot.
“Ow! Ooh! By the Twelve Gods! Oh, that bastard fairy!”
“Squee-hee-hee!” the air opined, as the spirit of Bogh-Harrat faded back into the fey.
“Well…” I said after a moment, “I think I’m going to count this as ‘we were both right’. Now, we’d better take a look at that foot, Holmes.”
“No! I’ll fix it myself!”
“What? You are not a doctor, Warlock.”
“And you are not a boggart-fighting guy!” He turned to Grogsson and Lestrade and shouted, “We are not involving Watson in any further cases, is that clear?”
When neither of them answered, he again bellowed, “Is that clear?”
“Urgh. Fine,” Grogsson grunted.
“As you wish, I suppose,” said Lestrade.
“Good! Because Watson needs to stay safe. And as for you, John: get out of here, right now! Go on, march! And as a special favor to me, do try not to get killed on the way home, eh?”
Burning with shame and anger, I turned to go. Lestrade refused to meet my gaze, though I could not tell if he was sulking because he did not like to have his hand forced, or because he’d let his case go so very wrong.
My only consolation came from Torg, who gave me the smallest nod as I left. He was always one who could say more with his gaze than his words.
Because of you, James McCarthy will escape the noose. The life that would have ended now shall flourish. Perhaps, if fortune smiles, flourish alongside Alice Turner.
Or, to put it another way:
Yah. U did gud.
THE ENGINEER’S DUMB
YOU MUST KNOW THE KIND OF PERSON THIS STORY regards: one of those fellows whose knowledge of a particular subject is so vast, they might at first seem an intellectual giant. And yet… let the subject veer ever so slightly from the vein of their expertise and it quickly becomes clear that their focus on one area of knowledge has driven all other forms of learning from their brain. They know nothing of current events, of cultural mores, or of the splendid variety of the world around them. They cannot cook. They don’t know which clothes they ought to wear or how to take care of them. Indeed, they cannot even take care of themselves. They are smart/stupid.
Victor Hatherley was such a man. Absolutely brilliant. And absolutely dumb. His brain could unravel any complexity of hydraulic engineering, yet failed to detect a trap so simple most schoolchildren would not have fallen for it.
He came to my attention one morning, when I was having a bit of a lie-in. I should have risen. I should have begun the daily tread of medical monotony that had become my bane—checking temperatures and distributing pills and generally performing the tasks necessary that Mary might be able to say she was married to a doctor. Yet my covers were warm, and the day that faced me so devoid of the thrilling adventures I’d known with Holmes that I could hardly bring myself to arise and face it.
So instead, it came to me. As I lay there in my comfortable nest of pillows and procrastination, Chives the doorman bustled in and said one of the “old guards” had come in from the railroad with a patient. I groaned. This was one of the hazards of living so close to Paddington Station; every now and then, one got a railroad case. This much could be said for them: they were never boring. Oh no. In fact, they tended to be grisly in the extreme. Usually it meant that some poor fellow had gotten himself run over by a train, or had forgotten to take his face out of the way before two heavy passenger cars had rolled into each other and the giant iron couplers snapped shut. Often the victim of such an accident would be presented to me by the fellow who had caused said accident and then enlisted the help of several comrades to bring the unfortunate sufferer to my home in six or seven separate buckets and express the hope that there was “something I could do”.
With a heavy sigh, I instructed Chives to tell our guests I would be right down, then began pulling on the least blood-absorbent set of clothes I could find. Apparently, I was not fast enough for whatever “old guard” the railroad had sent, for I alighted at the foot of my stairs to find he had buggered off, leaving nothing more than my new patient’s card. This proclaimed him to be Victor Hatherley, a hydraulic engineer who either lived or worked—or, who knew, perhaps both—at 3rd floor, 16A Victoria Street. Stepping into my sitting room, I found the fellow in question propped up in one of my overstuffed chairs. He was more or less whole—which was rare for railway cases—but slumped in a stunned sort of stupor that gave me to know that whatever troubled him was no trivial concern. As soon as he saw me, his eyebrows lurched expectantly upwards and he asked, “Are you the doctor?”
“Yes. I am Dr. John Watson, at your s—”
“I think I need your help.” As he spoke, he brandished his right hand at me. It was swaddled in bandages. From the shape of it, I could tell that the man’s thumb must either be pressed very firmly down against the hand or—more likely, judging from the amount of blood on his dressings—gone. He broke into a high-pitched, hysterical sort of laughter that told of nervous delirium with a clarity that far surpassed the act of marching up to somebody and saying, “Hello. I have nervous delirium.”
“You need medical aid! Here, drink this!” I told him, lunging for my brandy bottle. I tipped out a tumbler full of the stuff and turned back to find his expression doubtful.
“Er… do you think I should? In this condition?”
I always hate it when people refuse medical aid. I slopped a spritz of soda into it and said, “Well, it’s mostly water, you know. For hydration.”
“Oh?” he said. “Well then…”
Dutifully, he took his medicine and began to drink it down.
“There’s a good fellow,” I told him. “Yes… yes… keep hydrating.”
He’d got about half the glass down and I knew he was on the point of either regathering his wits, or simply falling over. Presently, he gave a deep, shuddering sigh.
“Better?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so. I… ugh… thank you, Doctor.”
“Think nothing of it. Now, let’s have a look at that hand, eh?”
/> Four-fifths of which was fine. No problems. No damage. A bit dirty, perhaps, but overall devoid of troubles.
The other fifth was gone. Victor Hatherley’s right thumb had been severed by a single clean blow from a bladed instrument.
“Can you restore it?” he asked.
“No,” I scoffed, because the question was—on the face of it—an utterly stupid one. Yet this man had had his senses badly rattled and was likely in the process of getting a grip on the fact that he was… well… going to have difficulty gripping a lot of other things. “No,” I said, more gently. “I fear there is no way to regrow a severed thumb. All we can do is clean and dress the wound and see that it heals as best as it may, without infection. By Jove… what a terrible accident you must have had.”
“It was no accident, Doctor. I was attacked!”
“Attacked? This is horrible!”
“Ha! I almost had worse! Much worse!”
“Worse than this? Have you told the police?”
“I can’t! Would they even believe me? If it were not for this missing thumb, I would not believe it myself! How would I convince them I’m not mad?” Oh, what a strange expression of confusion and helplessness crossed his face as he said it. God help me, but it thrilled me to my core. Victor Hatherley had fallen victim to that particular brand of infamy Holmes and I had made our special purview.
Of course, I was currently banished from Holmes’s company. As such, I could not even perceive the door of 221B. Only those that needed Holmes could find him. But perhaps Victor Hatherley did. And, if I were the one to bring him to Holmes, might I not as well? Struggling to keep as much hopefulness as I could out of my voice, I said, “It will take me some time to see to your hand, Mr. Hatherley. While I work, why don’t you tell me what happened. What was the first occurrence that seemed strange?”
“Oh, that’s easy! I got a customer.”
“And that is… unusual?” I asked, as I began to clean the wound.
“Sure! You see, I apprenticed for seven years at Venner and Matheson—the famous hydraulic engineering firm. Nobody had more expertise than they, and frankly, none of them had more natural aptitude than I. Over the years, I learned every one of their techniques. So, when my term of apprenticeship was over, I told them, ‘Ha! I got the better part of that deal! Bet it won’t be long until I’ve surpassed you as the city’s finest firm, eh?’ Then I went into business for myself. I put up my shingle in the hallway and struck out on my own!”
“In the hallway?” I asked. Then, remembering his card, added, “The third floor hallway, on Victoria Street? You didn’t put a sign out in front of the building?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’d let me do that,” he scoffed. “It’s a residential building, after all. But lots of people go down that hallway! Why, practically fifty people a day, I bet!”
I choked down the observation that it was likely to be the same fifty every day and swallowed my question about what percentage of London’s populace Mr. Hatherley supposed might find themselves in need of hydraulic engineering help.
“But nobody came!” he complained. (Hardly surprising.) “And my old colleagues were no help at all. I can’t even count the times they called upon the help of their other past apprentices while I was there—or shuffled off smaller jobs they had no appetite for. Yet they never sent me a single one!”
“Peculiar,” I said, smothering a smile. “So, one supposes you failed to supplant them as the city’s finest firm?”
“In nearly two years of business, I’d had only two consultations and one small job. My total takings amounted to twenty-seven pounds, two shillings. I’ve been burning through my inheritance, just to keep myself fed. I’ve considered giving up any number of times. But then, I’d just be sitting at home with nothing to do. And, since I spend all my time sitting at home doing nothing anyway, it doesn’t seem that closing down the business would make a great change.”
“Right. But you had a customer?” I reminded him.
“Yes! Stark! He said his name was Colonel Lysander Stark. Oh, what a strange fellow he was! Thinnest man I’d ever seen. You’d almost doubt he was a man at all. He looked like a skull somebody had stretched cheesecloth over, then painted it to look like skin. You could see all the bones in his wrists and knuckles.”
“Did it seem like he might be sick?” I wondered. “Perhaps he had some form of wasting disease?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so. He was merely underfed. Or… not fed. In the course of our conversation he mentioned that he does not eat at all. He subsists entirely on juice.”
My eyes narrowed. “What kind of juice?”
Hatherley shrugged. “I don’t know. He just kept calling it ‘The Juice’. Mentioned it several times. And when I asked him what he meant by it, he just said, ‘We are what sustains us.’ Every time I said the phrase ‘The Juice’ that’s what he’d say: ‘We are what sustains us.’ Like a little prayer, you know? Like someone saying ‘amen’ when their priest is done speaking.”
“All right,” I said. “Slightly peculiar, but all right. Did he tell you how he’d heard of you?”
“Not really. He just popped in out of the blue yesterday morning and said I’d been recommended to him as an orphan and a bachelor.”
“Er… as a hydraulic engineer, you mean?”
“No. That was the peculiar thing. I mean, he did present himself as someone who wanted to hire me—that’s why I was so glad of his coming—but his first concern seemed not to be my credentials. He wanted to be certain that I was unconnected. He badgered me about life since my parents had died, what it was like to live alone, whether I was courting anybody. I said I wasn’t and I wouldn’t even know how. He suggested that perhaps my close friends or business partners could teach me. I said I had no close friends or business partners and that this conversation was making me feel rather lonely and could we have a change of subject. I was hoping he might say something about the job, but he had another concern.”
“Which was…?”
“Could I keep a secret. He didn’t want to tell me anything about the job’s particulars until I swore I wouldn’t tell anybody what I was doing or where I was going. Most especially where I was going. He didn’t even want me telling the man at the train station—not even to buy a ticket. In fact, he said he’d already got me one under an assumed name, so wasn’t that convenient. And I had to admit it was. The ticket was to Eyford. Though, I did notice it was for rather late that night. I wouldn’t even arrive at the station until 11:15. Colonel Stark said he’d come from his home in his carriage to pick me up. I suggested that if he was going home in the interim, why shouldn’t we both go together, right now.”
“And what did he say to that very reasonable suggestion?” I asked.
“He seemed rather upset by it. He said no, he’d got it all figured out. Whoever came to help him must be an orphan and a bachelor with no friends and no business partners who came in the dead of night without telling anybody where they’d gone and without truly knowing themselves.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “And this did not seem at all peculiar to you?”
“Well… peculiar, yes. But not really a problem, because how many friendless, wifeless, partnerless, parentless hydraulic engineers could there be in London? I was beginning to realize I could probably name my price and that was quite nice, because I hadn’t made very much money in the past few years.”
“Right. So did he finally tell you what he wanted?”
“First he snuck up on my door, then suddenly flung himself out into the hall to make sure we weren’t being spied upon. There was nobody. So he asked me to swear I would say nothing of the job to anybody. I told him I already had. He said to do it again and make him believe it. So I said, ‘Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.’ He said that would be sufficient, though if I did indeed stick a needle in my eye it would have to be removed before I performed my services, for he did not wish any crushed-up needles to jam his machine.
”
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Mr. Hatherley continued, “Finally he told me what he wanted. In his home, he kept a large hydraulic press to make The Juice. The thing had got out of order and he was very worried. If he didn’t get it fixed right away, he might have to eat some food, he said, which was against his religion.”
“And which religion is this?” I asked.
“Do you know something odd? It was also called The Juice.”
“Right. Of course. Please continue.”
“He said he thought I could probably fix it in an hour. I was on the point of telling him I’d do it for twenty pounds, when he suddenly offered me fifty guineas if I’d do it all just as he requested. Well, since fifty is more than twenty, I said I would and bid him good day. Then there was nothing left to do but sit around and reflect on my change in fortune until it was time to get on the train.”
“Which you did?”
“Yes. By the time I got to Eyford, the station was nearly deserted. But there was Colonel Lysander, waiting with his horse and carriage. Oh, and it was beautiful. Why, I thought only people like the Queen rode around like that. All painted a deep red with brass lamps and fittings. The driver in fancy dress. And the horse—this perfect chestnut stallion without a hair out of place. Stark said I’d have plenty of time to enjoy the carriage, for it was a seven-mile drive to his house. But to me, it felt more like ten or twelve.”
My eyebrows went up again. “Then why did the horse seem so fresh after coming out to get you, do you think? Did you happen to observe where he drove you?”
“No. Colonel Lysander pulled all the shades down tight, so I could see nothing.”
“Do you remember any particular turnings?”
“Oh, there were plenty of them. Hundreds, I should think. Sharp ones. Every time we turned, I bumped my right shoulder against the side of the carriage, and I think I got quite the bruise. We drove and drove and drove, until we finally arrived at his home.”
“Ah! Can you tell me what it looked like?”
“I’m afraid not. Not the outside, anyway. We pulled nearly up to the door, you see, and the colonel wasted no time dragging me inside. It was richly furnished, all in dark colors. There was a strange, metallic odor. I’d never stopped to think of what a house might smell like if you lived there but never cooked, you know? He led me right into the sitting room and introduced me to his two companions—each as shrunken and skinny as he was. There was a man named Ferguson, whom Stark said was his clerk and manager. And then there was Stark’s daughter, Magerzart.”
The Finality Problem Page 10
