As I sat, despairing, a second avenue of hope presented itself. From behind the other door, I could hear a faint tapping and a lilting voice absent-mindedly singing, “Joosy Joose, sweet Joose, you’re my friend.”
Mindful not to make a sound, I eased myself to my knees, then my feet, and padded softly over to Magerzart’s door. Hopeful that the hissing steam in the room behind me might cover my voice, I whispered, “Magerzart? Is that you?”
There was a moment of silence, then…
“I’m not supposed to talk to you, Joose.”
“No, no! My name is John.”
“Well… soon it will be Joose.”
Trying to ignore the horror of that statement, I focused on ingratiating myself with her. “Why are you over on this side? Why not be with your father?”
She gave a guilty little sigh. “The cracks on this door are bigger so, sometimes when the ingredients pop, I get a little preview that comes through the cracks. And I’m so thirsty! I must be sustained.”
“But you must save me!”
“No.”
“Why not? You saved Victor.”
“Yes, but he is much more handsome than you.”
“What? No he’s not!”
“And he’s nicer. You are only normal. He is wonderful and he’s going to come and marry me and we’ll have real crumpets! Not just Joose. Oh! But I do love you, Joose, of course!”
“Stop calling me Juice!” I insisted, and gave the door a little punch.
I should not have done it. It gave forth a significant rattle and from behind the other door, I could hear Ferguson crow, “Ah! He’s awake!”
“Finally,” said Stark. I heard him click a heavy lever into place and then—to my horror—the hiss of steam died away, replaced by a faint but regular chuff, chuff, chuff. The room gave a tiny lurch. The air filled with the subtle grinding noise of well-oiled metal pieces sliding against each other. Above me, the ceiling began to descend. Oh, how much more merciful it would be if it had suddenly leapt down and pulped me before I had the chance realize what was happening. But no. Time to dread. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? I had it on the highest authority that fear made the juice sweeter. With my hand stretched up above my head, I could just feel the cold teeth of the ceiling pressing down at me. I tried to push back, tried to keep my arm straight, but with no sign that it was even laboring harder against the resistance, the ceiling continued its descent.
I ran to Stark’s side and threw my body against the door. There was a loud metallic bang, but the catch held. My injured shoulder and ankle sang with pain. “You can’t do this!” I cried. This was met only with laughter.
I ran about the room, raking my fingers against the walls. Could I pull a panel loose? Use it to jam the ceiling? No, I could get no purchase. All I could hear were the voices of my tormentors.
“Juice, Juice, Juice!”
“We are what sustains us,” Stark murmured.
“Joose? Can you hear me? I’ve put my mouth down near the crack of the door. Can I have a preview?”
“You bastards! I’ll kill you!” I shouted.
In response, I heard Stark say in his most judgmental tone, “Hmm. This statement smacks of overconfidence.”
Was there something I could do with the locks? I turned to run to Magerzart’s side, but on my first step, my head contacted the ceiling. Its sharp steel pyramids tore into my scalp. By God it stung, but what was that compared to what was coming? I remembered Hatherley’s words about trying to judge what might be the least painful position to be crushed to death in. Now I wished I’d let him finish the thought; an expert’s opinion would have been most welcome.
Crouching beneath the ceiling, I ran to Magerzart’s door and clawed the lock. But to what end? My fingers could not fit inside, and I had no tool. I wasn’t like Holmes; I could not simply conjure what I needed.
But wait!
I could.
On the night we had imprisoned a sea-monster in my wardrobe, Holmes had shown me how to conjure my soul-blade. Compared to his own demonic implement, mine had been laughable in the extreme—a three-inch-long sliver of bone. But would that not fit into the keyhole?
What was its name? Argh! What was the damn thing’s name? I had only to speak it, and I would have it. The ceiling was on me now, pressing me down. I was bent over, staring at that keyhole, shouting nonsense words. I remembered that the name of my soul-blade had something to do with its material. Some scientific or medical word for bone.
“Osseous!”
Nothing.
“Calceous!”
“Um… Calcifer?”
“Ossifer?”
Instantly a ragged pain shot through my right arm. Twice in the same day: that feeling of terrible pain, married to an instant swell of relief. I gave a cry of agony and triumph. This was answered by a fresh wave of excitement from my captors.
“Juice! Juice!”
“Sustenance!”
“Preview!”
I didn’t care; there in my palm sat the irregular white rod. I threw myself against Magerzart’s door and thrust it into the lock.
“Eek! What is that?” I heard her shout.
I could feel the tumblers in there. A strong lock, I thought, but not an overly complex one. That was good. I was bent double now. Still a few feet to go before the corrugated ceiling crushed me to death. Yet only a few inches before it closed down past the level of the keyhole, and what hope would there be for me then?
Suddenly—oh, most blessed of sounds!—a click. With a final push, the door burst open and I was out, into the light, into safety!
Well… partial safety. Before me stood Magerzart, wielding a cricket bat.
“Madam,” I said in my most warning tone, holding Ossifer in the guard position in front of me, “don’t.”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeahhhh!” she replied, throwing herself forward and swinging the cricket bat at my face.
I ducked under the blow and scuttled towards one corner of the room, crying, “No! Really! Don’t!”
But she came at me again, forcing me to dodge back against the wall.
“Look here, if you hit me with that thing—” I started to tell her, but was interrupted by another onslaught.
“Yaaaaah!”
“—you’re going to break my face and both of your wrists!”
“Rhaaaaaah!”
“I don’t mean to be rude, madam, but you are exceedingly frail and I don’t believe such an act could go well for either of us.”
“Hyaaaaah!”
“Very well! If you will not listen to reason…”
And I did it. For the first time, I willingly unleashed the power of my soul-blade on a living creature. Casting my Hippocratic oath aside, I ducked back from her next attack, then sprang forward behind it and struck forth with the physical embodiment of all my rage, anger and hate.
It poked a small hole in her, just near the wrist.
Magerzart froze where she was and stared at me, aghast, as if I had wounded her. And I suppose, technically, I had. Mostly though, she just looked like I’d hurt her feelings—as if she found my conduct rather un-juicemanly. We stood, facing each other in silence. I cleared my throat. I think I was just about to form some kind of apology when the air was rent by a terrible howling and a purple bolt of demon-fire smashed through the wall behind Magerzart, streaked over her shoulder, across the room and through the wall behind me.
Azazel’s fire! I had seen Holmes summon it time and again!
“Holmes!” I shouted, “It’s me! I’m here!”
A second bolt came through the wall, screamed just past my left leg, blew the door off the pressing room behind me and buried itself in the foot-thick crushing-plate ceiling (which was, I could not help but note, just eight or nine inches from the floor now). The purple flame hissed out, leaving a black and melted crater in the side of the plate. Molten metal dripped down onto the floor.
“Er… yes… by which, I sort of meant, ‘Holmes, I’m here, so
please stop shooting.’”
But those things always seemed to come in threes. The final blast came high, passing above Magerzart’s head and my shoulder and arcing all the way through the juice press to the room beyond. From within came a horrible, shrieking boom and Stark and Ferguson met a fate nearly as horrible as the one they had inflicted on so many others. It seems the room on the far side of the juice chamber was the machine room. Holmes’s final bolt had holed the boiler, filling the room with scalding steam. As I stood there, listening to my antagonists’ mortal screams, well…
It is hard to pity such men, I know.
But I tell you this, dear reader: for anyone standing just a few feet away, listening to it happen, it is impossible not to.
Magerzart’s eyes went wide with horror.
Or… wider.
And finally, the belabored wall behind her met its match as Torg Grogsson—eyes alight with rage—tore away the door and its frame. Behind him stood Holmes with the green fires burning in his eyes and his left fingers still smoking from Azazel’s onslaught. Then Inspector Lestrade ducked under one of Torg’s massive arms, stepped into the room, and announced, “Miss Magerzart Stark? It should not surprise you to hear: you are under arrest.”
But the next figure disagreed. Victor Hatherley flung himself into the room, wrapped protective arms around Magerzart, and insisted, “You can’t! She must come and be my bride. I shall feed her crumpets every day and call her Maggie.”
“Of course you will,” said Holmes. “Because engineers solve problems.”
“But… no,” Lestrade stammered. “She drinks people. Her whole life she has subsisted by drinking person after person and—though I am aware of a certain level of hypocrisy inherent in the fact that it is me saying this—that is not okay.”
“Ohhhhhh, are you sure, Lestrade?” Holmes asked. “I mean, it’s not her fault what her father fed her, is it? And she seems so nice.”
“But… drinking people…” Lestrade protested. “That is not acceptable, or I’d have been doing it this whole time. Really, does… um… does anybody else wish to weigh in on the subject? Given my extraordinary self-control all these years, I feel like I should have the moral high ground here. Yet… somehow, I also feel like I sort of don’t. Anybody else? Anybody?”
“Pick fast,” Grogsson urged. “Da house on fire.”
“Purpul fire,” he added.
Then, “Pretty.”
He wasn’t wrong. Holmes and Azazel’s mutual contribution seemed to have had a greater effect than any of us had at first realized. The destruction of the house on the hill was the talk of Eyford for years to come, mostly because of the beauty of the blaze. The death of Colonel Stark (or Dr. Becher, or any of the dozen or so other aliases he maintained) and his unfortunate clerk, Ferguson, were met with grief, but not surprise. Their charred remains were found right next to the ruins of a strange machine and anybody who kept strange machines in the house should expect… well… pretty much exactly what they’d got. Everybody was happy that that nice Magerzart girl had survived the blaze.
Even happier when they were told they could just call her Maggie.
Pick fast. Da house on fire.
Maggie herself was in a state of shock and dismay, though her first taste of crumpet went a great way towards dispelling this. Holmes and Hatherley argued long and hard that she should not face criminal charges, but should be released to Mr. Hatherley’s matrimonial guardianship. Lestrade assured them that was not a thing. Then again, much of the evidence had been destroyed in the fire, the case was a bizarre one (meaning that it would be difficult to prosecute, especially without Hatherley’s help) and Grogsson didn’t feel like writing a report. As such, love won out and Magerzart moved in to Victor’s third-floor office. Though she’d had a somewhat sheltered childhood, she rapidly surpassed her new husband in business acumen and helped him prosper. We checked in on her a few times to make sure she wasn’t having any… relapses… but all seemed to be going rather well—not withstanding the few times she forgot herself and addressed me as “Dr. Joose”.
As for myself, the outcome came much more abruptly.
“How did you find me?” I gasped as my friends and I stood before the burning ruins of House Stark.
Holmes gave me a rather severe look. “We were still debating where to begin our search as we sat in the carriage. Lestrade was very concerned over what you’d said about our goal being in the middle of our circle. He said he wished we’d listened to what you were saying to the stationmaster and that perhaps we’d better ask him what he remembered of the conversation. So, we turned back and who should we see but the stationmaster, who was all concerned because he’d just got a wire from the next station up the line that some fool had thrown himself off the train. He also remembered seeing you again and wondering if the two phenomena might be related. When we asked him where he’d last seen you, he said, ‘Stumbling up the hill behind the rosebushes, towards the skinny German’s house.’ From there, of course, I had it all figured out in an instant.”
From behind Holmes came a burst of strenuous throat-clearing.
“By which I mean, of course, Lestrade had it all figured out in an instant.”
“Well, I’m glad you came,” I said. “Another few minutes and I probably would have—”
“Died?” Holmes interjected. “That’s the word you’re looking for, isn’t it, Watson? That your life was in terrible danger? Again? And that if it was not for the timely intervention of your friends, you’d have been killed? Because we know that, John. We are horribly aware of the fact. By the Twelve Gods, it sometimes seems that keeping you alive is becoming a full-time job!”
“But—”
“No! There is no ‘but’. There is only you, going home, right now.”
Which…
…resentfully…
I did.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE F***ING MEN
AS I SIT TO LAY THIS ADVENTURE TO PAPER, DEAR READER…
Oh…
My hand trembles.
I hardly dare to do it. Yet, without the revelation contained in this adventure, the progression of the clues Holmes and I received about the danger to the world of men would be incomplete.
So, I shall.
I’m going to do it. Even though it regards the topic that well-born Englishmen will avoid more stridently than any other. Even though it is the sort of thing one hopes one’s mother will never, ever read.
It began on a Wednesday morning at my home. Joachim interrupted my breakfast to tell me that a “pathient had arrived to theek my aid”. The man was waiting in the parlor. I was well within my rights, of course, to finish my breakfast. Indeed, many men of my station would take care not to hurry themselves, just to prove their importance.
Many men of my station are arse-faces.
I slugged back my tea, abandoned my poached egg, and rose to see how I could be useful. Yet, as I stepped into my front parlor, I got a shock: there sat Inspector Vladislav Lestrade.
“Oh! Lestrade! Hello. You… you need my help?” I stammered.
“Yes, Dr. Watson. I fear I do.”
“I shall strive to be of service, of course. Though I do hope it’s nothing… dental.”
“Nothing of the sort,” said the vampiric detective, with a certain coldness in his tone. “There is a case, Doctor.”
I must have got a very eager look, for he rose from his chair, waggled a finger at me and hissed, “Now, before you get too excited, I wish to make this clear: there is no danger involved. No magic or demons or supernatural assailants. There may well be no true victim of this crime and—depending on who you ask—perhaps no crime at all. Yet, our highest echelons find it deeply disturbing and it is certainly not the kind of thing we wish to hear of in the papers. We need an outside agent, Dr. Watson. One whose wit and discretion we can trust.”
“And you didn’t go to Holmes?”
“I think I just said, ‘One whose wit and discretion we can trust’,” Lestra
de growled. “And knowing how reluctant he is to see you solving cases, I did not see the need to inform him I was coming here. Do you?”
“No.”
“But you want the case?”
“By God, yes!”
“Good. I think we can do business,” Lestrade said, with that guarded kind of smile he used to hide his teeth. He reached into his jacket and withdrew an oversized envelope. “Your client is Hilton Cubitt of Ridling Thorpe Manor, Norfolk. Due to the nature of his troubles, he does not care to discuss the matter at his home, or near his wife. He will be in London later this afternoon, about four o’ clock. May I instruct him to call on you here?”
“Of course. But, Lestrade, what is the nature of the case?”
He shook his head. “No. I will not speak of it.”
“Eh? Why not?”
“Because you will try to get out of it.”
“But—”
“He will be here just after four. The details are all in the envelope. Do not open it until I am gone.”
“Why?”
He did not tarry to answer. With the superhuman speed of his kind, he swept past me to my front door, opened it himself, favored me with a quick bow, and was gone.
“How very peculiar,” I mused, shaking my head. Though let me just admit that—as normality had become so burdensome to me—the peculiar was a welcome change. The reader may easily understand, then, that it was with a blend of detached amusement and hopeful curiosity that I folded open the envelope’s flap and allowed it to disgorge onto my side table a single sheet of paper.
Or rather, a single sheet of graphic smut.
I gave a horrified gasp. Being a doctor, I was quite familiar with the human body, but I’d never seen anything like this before. Somebody had taken the time to draw severeal rows of nude figures in exhaustive detail. All the figures were male. Very male. Let us only say that certain exaggerative liberties taken by the illustrator left little doubt as to the subjects’ gender. Nor were their proclivities much of a mystery either, for the figures cavorted with each other in such lewd contortions that I think only a few of the world’s foremost acrobats might have a chance of repeating them.
The Finality Problem Page 13
