Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus

by P. C. Martin

  “We might get caught,” I expostulated. “And then what would become of us? These are dangerous stakes, Holmes.”

  “For home, health, and beauty, eh, Mycroft?—Martyrs on the altar of our country. But perhaps, Watson, I should give you some indication of my reasoning up to this point. Then, if our obvious path remains unclear to you, I shall condescend to further explain the necessity of what I propose to do tonight.”

  I frowned, but, lighting my cigar, I leaned back in my chair and listened.

  “It must be evident to you, as it is to me, that Cadbury's body was placed on top of a train after he was killed, and so came to rest where it was found. Very good. How was such a feat accomplished, I asked myself. Maybe thrown from a bridge or overpass, or possibly an airship. Or perhaps dropped from the back window of one of the many houses and flats which flank the train line. I did not seriously prefer the latter choice over the others until I received Mycroft's reply to my telegram asking her for the addresses and names of foreign agents in London.

  “You are aware, Watson, that my knowledge of the byways and hedges of London is quite minute, and my intimate acquaintance with certain unusual features of our great city has in times past been of some use to me. Well, when I saw the name of Caulfield Gardens, Kensington, listed as the residence of a leading international agent, I recalled that some time ago, while on one of my leisurely rambles, I had noticed that the houses along one side of this quiet lane had their backs so close to the railway, as to practically brush against the sides of the trains as the latter rush on by. Woe be to the passenger who leans out of the window along that stretch of railway. At that very point, too, the trains are often held in suspension for some minutes, due to the presence of switches some way ahead, near Aldgate Station, where two Metropolitan lines cross.

  “Anyway, it struck me that anybody residing in one of those houses might quietly and easily dispose of a body in just such a way as I had imagined. When I further discovered that the agent residing at that very address had left London precipitately late last night, I was satisfied that I must be on the right track. Mycroft has heard the full extent of my reasoning, and agrees that Mr Peter von Oberon, employed in Moriarty Industrial as manager of the International Research Department, is most likely the man we are after. And as he has not seen fit to return home since his speedy departure after the events of last night, we might try our luck in searching his unsuspecting house for any useful shred of evidence that might put us on his track.”

  “Doubtless you are right, Holmes,” said I, trying to prevent my admiration from seeping into my stern-set features. “But could not we get a warrant and legalize our search?”

  “Tut, man; we have no evidence against the fellow; hardly even a plausible suspicion. Besides, in applying for a warrant we would be compelled to put our incomplete knowledge into the hands of the law, and that would be catastrophic at this stage.”

  “I still don't like it,” said I.

  “Neither do I,” said Mycroft Holmes suddenly. “But I fear my brother is right, Dr. Watson. There can be no doubt that von Oberon had a confederate in this affair. We can only hope that a search of the house will reveal something to help us unravel these mysteries.”

  “Exactly,” chimed in her brother. “Besides, I promise that I shall do the illegal part. You shall do nothing but keep watch, and hold my lantern. Mycroft, I wish you would come along too.”

  Miss Holmes began to shake her head vigorously, but stopped abruptly and tilted her head to one side.

  “I just will, then,” said she after a moment's pause. Holmes appeared pleasantly surprised, and taking her hand kissed it gallantly. “Thank you, Mycroft,” said he. “You honor us with your company. It's nearly 11. Shall we be on our way? Watson, you'll have to ride with me, and Mycroft can take the sidecar.”

  Miss Holmes' eyes narrowed to slits. “If you imagine,” said she to Holmes in a soft coo tinged with steel, “that you shall ever convince me to ride on that infernal machine of yours, you are very much mistaken.”

  “I shall accompany Miss Holmes in a cab,” I said hastily, vastly relieved. Holmes looked reproachfully at me, but I diverted my eyes and, taking up my hat, left the restaurant in search of a four-wheeler.

  Half an hour later, we had crossed through the gate of number 19 Caulfield Gardens, and become felons in the eyes of the law.

  Sherlock Holmes courteously allowed his sister Mycroft to precede him up the porch steps, whilst I endeavored to replace the broken chain upon the gate as noiselessly as was possible in the smoggy gloom. By the time my task was accomplished, Holmes had already managed to beguile one of the locks on the front door, and was rapidly persuading the other to likewise give way. In the hazy darkness I could hear the faint tink-ing of his instruments, as I kept my eyes fixed on the street, and Miss Holmes stood idly by.

  I noticed in the distance the glow of a lantern slowly traveling in our direction, even as my ears picked up the leisurely tread of a policeman on his beat.

  “Put out your torch, Holmes,” I called to my friend in an alarmed whisper, “or our presence will surely be discovered.”

  At that moment Holmes' work was rewarded with a loud click, and the front door swung open. Mycroft Holmes passed into the house first as her brother held the door for her, and I ducked inside last, quickly shutting the door behind me.

  The hall was miserable and bare in the dim light of the lantern, no ornaments or bric-a-brac of note to add any personality to the room. Holmes was already marching briskly up the long, curved staircase, taking the torchlight with him; his sister followed. I looked around the hall, my uneasiness increasing as the fan of light extending from the lantern receded, before squaring my shoulders and following my companions up the stairs, hunting crop in hand. Holmes had insisted, as we made the transfer of the equipment I had brought at his request, that I take his favorite loaded crop, while he pocketed my weapon to keep his own revolver company.

  Holmes' brisk voice now shattered the gloom. “Ah, this must be the very place. Observe, Sister Mycroft, if you please, the position of this window over the railway lines below. Now, where is Watson? Ah!” he exclaimed I entered the room, and thereupon turned again to the window without paying any further attention to me. “Yes, I'm sure this is the place. Do hold this lantern for me, Mycroft dear—yes, indeed, this can only be... by Jove, these are bloodstains, or I'm an ass twice over.” Holmes seized the torch from his sister's hand, and fumbled with one or two of its dials.

  I remembered that some months before, Holmes had toiled several hours at his workbench over that torch, installing a device to which he had assigned the rather macabre name of 'blood-light'. “It illuminates bloodstains, no matter how old,” he had told me, “a vast improvement on that clumsy and altogether unwieldy liquid re-agent to hemoglobin I discovered on the day of our acquaintance.” And putting out the lights in the room, he had proceeded to demonstrate his new contraption's ability, by pricking his palm and allowing a drop or two of blood to drip onto the bench. I had been most interested to note the effect of the invisible light upon the blood then.

  I could see the same effect now as I looked about the room in which we stood. The windowsill and floor appeared peppered and streaked with iridescent green splotches.

  “Aha!” said Holmes triumphantly, “What did I say? Blood—on the window, along the floor, across the passage and most probably down the staircase, too.” He shone the light along the trail of gleaming green patches, and followed their trail back down the steps.

  “Hallo, hallo! What have we here?” he exclaimed, whipping out his powerful lens and inspecting a barely perceptible smudge on the landing. “A footprint, eh? Now this does simplify matters.” He proceeded down the stairs, muttering to himself. Presently he bolted back up the steps, looking like an excited cat in his agitation. “Mr Cadbury was killed just inside the front door; the porch was swilled down not long after the crime was enacted, but there remains ample evidence that he bled copiously. He
was then dragged up the stairs, along the passage, into the room, propped against the window, and pitched over the sill just as a train slowed in its emergence from the tunnel. The evidence is indisputable.”

  Holmes returned the lantern to Miss Mycroft, and resumed his inspection of the window sill. The latter, beyond her first nod of approval, seemed to lose all interest in her brother's proceedings. She lay the lantern gently on the sill, and wandered around the room, occasionally glancing surreptitiously at her watch; she finally drifted through an open door leading into an adjoining room.

  I took her place by Holmes' side and watched him inch his way along the sill with his great magnifying glass. The walls trembled suddenly as a train rumbled through a nearby tunnel, and Holmes' cry of elation pierced plainly through the thunderous roar. “See there, Watson, how the train slackens its speed as it emerges from the tunnel? Now then, it has come to a full halt! Cannot anything be easier than to place a body onto the roof of the carriage not five feet beneath the window? And no one inside the train could possibly suspect its presence!”

  I could not stop myself from breaking into an expression of profound admiration. “You have again proved yourself a veritable master, Holmes,” I said. “Never have you risen to a greater height than this! How you discovered all this is inconceivable.”

  Holmes waved away my praise. “Tut, tut, my dear Watson, on the contrary. Once I had observed that the body must have fallen from the roof of a train, the remainder of the affair became necessarily trivial. We had only to discover whether anyone had the means of thus disposing of the body, and what his motives were... ”

  To my complete astonishment, before Holmes had quite finished his sentence, he had hurled me violently against the far wall, and the successive reports of his revolver eclipsed his warning shout. I heard bullets ricocheting off metal with a deafening ring; a volley of flying discs embedded themselves in the window frame exactly where I had stood only a split second earlier. I recognized the cast of the weapons. Chakram discs—Rajput warriors!

  Hardly pausing to wonder what on earth had brought Rajput fighters into Mr. von Oberon's respectable house in Caulfield Gardens, and whence they had suddenly appeared, deployed the cannon embedded in my mechanical arm and fired at another disc-throwing assailant. This latter collapsed instantly under the shock of the cannonade. I jumped to my feet and hurriedly surveyed the situation as I leveled my cannon again to take aim.

  Holmes' initial shots with his two revolvers had been deflected by the Rajput’s armor; he was engaged now in battle with a fearsome helmeted fighter wielding a short curved dirk in one hand and a Khanda sword in the other. I admit I was momentarily enthralled by the sight of my friend firing relentlessly at his opponent; the bullets at that close range found gaps in the armor, and as I watched, his attacker crumpled to the floor with a horrible gurgling noise.

  Holmes cast his revolvers aside; in the torchlight I saw the glint of my friend's steel mitts creeping up over his fists, like the scaly skin of a crocodile, with razors protruding between the knuckles, and thus armed he took his next opponent by surprise, even though the latter wielded a Katar, the dreadful Rajput triple-bladed knife, in each hand. The complex movements and lightning-quick thrusts and parries fascinated me, as though I were watching dancers in a complex choreographed display instead of a desperate battle to the death.

  But my inattention to my own danger cost me dearly. Just as Holmes' knee crashed hideously into his opponent's solar plexus, a lily-shaped blade shrieked across the room towards me, narrowly missing my face as I jumped backwards and leveled my cannon at the menace. I fired wildly; the blade crashed into my mechanical arm with a jarring screech, and the rope to which the blade was attached coiled itself madly around my arm and person. Further attempts to fire my cannon proved that the mechanism was hopelessly jammed; the blade protruded from my arm like a monstrous appendage. I struggled against the rope, and managed to free my other hand sufficiently to raise the hunting crop against the fourth assailant who leaped towards me in the wake of his roped blade.

  Too late, I saw that he wielded a snaking Aara, and before I had a chance to parry his blow, my stick had crashed against the furthest wall, seized from my hand by the coiling belt-like sword. I jerked back as he swung for another blow; I writhed and the rope fell away from around my waist, freeing my mechanical arm. The curved blade still lodged deeply among the splintered metallic factions of my forearm and built-in cannon, but I thanked my good angels that at least my mechanical arm afforded me a shield-like defense against the razor-edged Aara. The sword cracked like a whip against the metal, and I dodged and crouched against the onslaught as again and again my attacker sent the flexible blade flicking noisily about me.

  At last I seized my chance, and the Aara coiled itself about my arm. I jerked my arm back, and my assailant stumbled heavily forward, nearly landing on top of me. In an instant I had wrenched the handle of the Aara from him, and we were locked like wrestlers in a deadly grip. His fingers crept dangerously toward my throat; we thrashed about the room, knocking against furniture, sending whatnots and splinters flying. Bullets flying all about us, we crashed at last against a huge bookcase; the books scattered as the shelves tottered and shook, and finally the bookcase lost its balance altogether. And then my assailant and I found ourselves not only fighting against each other, but pushing against the solid mass of wood bearing relentlessly down upon us.

  In that decisive instant, I heard my friend call to his sister, and his words sounded as though spoken through clenched teeth.

  “Run, Mycroft—run while you can!”

  I looked up and caught sight of Mycroft Holmes in the doorway of the adjoining room, glancing impatiently at her pocketwatch. In her other hand she held a smoking pistol, and I suddenly noticed that the floor about her was strewn with slain intruders. Pocketing her watch, she surveyed the disaster zone into which our surroundings had transformed, and called to her brother with a sigh of exasperation, and rolled her eyes.

  “Really, brother Sherlock...” is what I believe she said. My opponent was gaining the upper hand, and I found myself gasping for breath even as I tightened my own grip on him and struggled against the crushing weight of the bookcase.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mycroft Holmes fumble with the jabot collar at the nape of her neck; In a flash, a fabulous mask shot up over her face from within a fold of her lapels; from a crevice she extracted a sort of miniature hosepipe, and pulled it over her shoulder. The last thing I clearly saw was that she hid her eyes in the sleeve of her other arm, and suddenly a dense cloud of vile acrid steam shot out of the nozzle of the hose she held.

  An inexpressibly horrible sensation assaulted my face as the cloud expanded across the room; my lachrymal and mucous glands felt on fire, and my opponent and I broke violently away from each other, desperately seeking relief. The agonizing sensation increased; I lost all consciousness.

  I cannot accurately recount what occurred during the time I lay unconscious under the fallen bookshelf. Miss Holmes apparently resuscitated her brother, who had likewise fallen in a gas-induced faint, and when he had revived sufficiently (so he told me later) he saw my form sprawled underneath the bookcase, and despaired that I had died. I admit I was deeply touched by my friend's kindly concern for my well-being.

  However, I knew nothing of these things until the touch of something cold and wet on my face roused me. Holmes' spreading grin filled my blurry vision, as he applied a soaked handkerchief to my still-convulsing features.

  Shuffling sounds nearby caught my attention as I returned to my senses; I turned my head slightly, surprised to see a number of efficient-looking people scurrying about the apartment, dusting surfaces, taking notes, and performing the usual official duties. A man in a tall hat nearby was kneeling on the floor, performing the familiar ministrations of a doctor upon my late aggressor. Two hefty constables were supporting a limping figure, covered in bandages, out of the room. Among these sedulous souls, I noti
ced Mycroft Holmes standing in the doorway giving orders to one of the men. How long I had lain unconscious I cannot tell; despite the pounding ache in my temples I felt the necessity to leave this battleground as quickly as possible.

  Holmes perceived my attempts to raise myself, and put a steadying arm about my shoulders, gripping my mechanical arm with his other hand. Aided in this fashion I soon found myself on my feet again, swaying and a little unsteady, but alive and vitally unhurt. I noticed that the curving blade had been extracted from my arm; turning to Holmes (who was still fussing about my person) I thanked him for his kind attentions. Holmes' humorous grin disappeared and, resuming his habitual nonchalant composure, he opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he would have said was cut short by a half-growled clearing of Mycroft Holmes' throat; she, too, apparently felt the urgent need to vacate the premises. We turned to follow her out of the room, Holmes still firmly supporting my arm.

  He stopped abruptly just as we poised to descend the staircase.

  “One moment, if you please, Watson; I forgot the torch.” He left me leaning against the balustrade, and I turned my gaze back towards the scene of our latest adventure. The blood-light of Holmes' torch on the window-ledge illuminated what now resembled a slaughterhouse; radiant green splotches leered at me from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the door, and the window, between the shadows cast by the discreet figures documenting the scene. I shuddered in disgust.

  “Ghastly, isn't it?” said I to Holmes when he returned with torch in hand.

  “Did you think so?” he replied, with a look of angelic innocence spread across his bruised features. “I'm sure the exercise was most refreshing.”