“Welcome, Mister Holmes and Doctor Nikola,” the high pitched voice greeted us. “I have been looking forward to meeting you both for some time.”
There have been very few times in my life when I have been taken completely by surprise but the man sitting behind the table in the back room certainly warranted same. The first thing I noticed was that he had the most severe case of albinism I’d ever seen: his skin was as pale and as delicate as a piece of China. His hair looked like thousands of spiders had spun web from his scalp, so fine and pale was it.
His head was so disproportionately large that if skull-size was a true measure of intelligence he would be more intelligent than Holmes and I combined. I stared into his feral pink eyes and was reminded of a white rat that Apollyon had captured and brought to me one time. The eyes of that rat had glared at me with the same hatred as Moriarty’s disciple did now.
“Permit me to introduce myself, my name is John Macklin.” The albino stood and walked around the table and for the first time I saw Macklin in full. His body was dwarfish in configuration; it most closely resembled that of a four year old child except for arms that seemed to belong to a member of the great ape family. He stretched one of these limbs out to offer his hand which Holmes and I declined to shake.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Holmes was tensing to strike at the albino dwarf.
“I wouldn’t do that,” came a stern voice from behind us. In our surprise at the appearance of Macklin, Holmes and I had both forgotten that this new criminal mastermind was not alone. Colonel Sebastian Moran had the drop on us.
“Excellent work, sir,” Macklin complimented as he began to crack his knuckles one by one. The smug satisfaction in that falsetto voice and the eerie pops from his finger joints put my teeth on edge. “You both, of course, know the Colonel? As I said earlier, gentlemen, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you both. Although, after spending some time with the late professor’s dossiers on you, I feel as if I already know you.
“James Moriarty, my mentor, knew that the end was coming and so he made a plan to gain posthumous revenge on you. I have modified that plan to one in which I bring down the throne of the British Empire.”
Macklin reached into the pocket of his vest and pulled out a fob-watch. “Your capture means that my operation can continue. Poor Prince Albert Victor has been laid to rest and the Prince of Wales has called a special sitting of Parliament, and—with the exception of poor George on his deathbed—all members of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha will be there. I’m sure that the Prince of Wales’s tearful renunciation of his succession rights will be remembered for eternity.”
Macklin pulled a revolver from the waistband of his trousers. “Colonel, would you please ensure that our guests didn’t bring along any of their friends from the police force? I can keep an eye on them.”
Moran made a hasty exit. The albino gave a high pitched giggle. “The turmoil that will follow if Eddy tries to climb back on the throne! Every royal bastard from the last century will make a claim for the Crown. Republican sentiment will grow in the period of uncertainty. England will look to a strong man for leadership.”
“You?” I asked, even as I knew what the answer would be.
“You flatter me, sir. No, while I would be an excellent ruler, my unconventional appearance would go against the populace accepting me as their emperor. Besides, it’s easier to be the power behind the throne. Moran’s military service makes him the ideal man to become the Lord High Protector and he will make a perfect puppet ruler,” the albino gloated.
The sound of police whistles suddenly intruded into Macklin’s speech. The albino was distracted and his gun began to waver away from Holmes and I. I saw Holmes leap!
I reached for the pistol I had put in my pocket earlier in the evening, but did not make it to the weapon before I heard the gunshot and felt the burning sensation of a bullet grazing my right bicep. Holmes was upon Macklin and applied a baritsu throw that disarmed and incapacitated the man.
I was groaning in pain as Holmes came to my side. He quickly removed my coat and tore my sleeve off, examined me and bound my arm with his pocket kerchief. “It’s just a flesh wound,” he declared tersely with obvious relief in his voice.
It was at that point that the police burst into the room lead by Inspector Peter Jones.
“Who do I arrest?” Jones boomed.
Holmes indicated where he had left Macklin, but much to his irritation the dwarf had recovered and taken advantage of the chaos and utilised the smuggler’s tunnel that his mentor had used three years ago. Inspector Jones commanded his men to take the tunnel but they reported that the criminal was nowhere to be found.
The Inspector told us that Pendergast had arrived at the Yard with the note I had slipped him when I paid him for our cab ride. While the Inspector was disappointed that he was too late to capture Macklin, he was pleased that Colonel Moran was in his custody.
A medico was called to treat me more thoroughly. He introduced himself as Dr John Watson and confirmed Holmes’s initial assessment, as he cleaned and bandaged my wound.
The next morning saw Holmes and I again in the Stranger’s Room of The Diogenes Club, where we joined Mycroft for breakfast. The elder Holmes looked more relaxed than the last time we saw him. He was wearing a different suit and new cuffs and collar.
As he offered us a hearty English breakfast Mycroft informed us that the police were searching for John Macklin and that he was sure that such a distinctive individual would be easy to find. Holmes merely smiled, for, upon our return to Baker Street the evening before Holmes and I had discussed the escape of the deformed genius; we’d agreed a man so distinctive in appearance was sure to have planned for such a contingency and would be able to travel incognito.
Mycroft then reported that, based on information that Moran had given to the police after his arrest, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting had been caught preparing to smother Her Majesty in her sleep. Moran’s confession at the eleventh hour was considered the only act that could have saved the rogue Colonel from swinging from a noose. In any event, according to a Royal Physician’s report that Mycroft read from, Her Majesty was merely shaken. The report also contained an encouraging prognosis for Prince George who was starting to rally from his bout with typhus.
As Holmes added to his breakfast plate, he asked about the Prince of Wales’s address to Parliament that Macklin had mentioned the previous night. Holmes was rewarded with news that the purpose of the speech was for the Prince to address and deny the rumours that he would be relinquishing his succession rights. Mycroft assured Holmes and I that we had saved the British Empire, and, as the news of Edward’s speech spread through the colonies, the unrest was sure to resolve itself.
As I look back knowing what I know now, we three might have been more concerned about the escape of the deadly dwarf.
For, the next time we faced the albino genius Mycroft Holmes himself was accused of the murder of Colonel Moran. The matter is recorded in my notes as A Study in White.
The Adventure of the Reckless Resurrectionist
Will Murray
The events that I am poised to relate transpired late in that terrible summer of the year 1918. The Great War, then at long last lurching to a satisfactory conclusion, nevertheless began exerting its toll upon our civilian population.
The scourge commenced with an outbreak that spring of what the French called La Grippe. The “three-day fever” was the name we gave it. In its earliest manifestations, it was unremarkable, for most patients recovered. There came an interregnum of several months. After that merciful pause, the revitalized virus reappeared in late summer, vastly more terrible than heretofore.
Before long, newspapermen had dubbed it the “Spanish Influenza”, owing to the fact that our war censors had forbidden the press from reporting its true and terrible extent for many months—exce
pt in the case of neutral Spain, which was ravaged by the modern plague most mercilessly.
I had been called out of retirement by the war. Not that a physician ever truly retires, but as the war-wounded streamed into London hospitals, I feared that I worked far harder in those awful months than in all the busy years of my previous practice.
It was during the treating of the casualties lately arrived from the Battle of Saint-Mihiel that September that I found myself treating an American doctor with the portentous name of Dr West. It was portentous only in the fact that American Expeditionary Force soldiers had cultivated the habit of referring to comrades who had been lost in battle as having “gone West”—in the direction of sunset, one assumes.
This sinister connection was lost upon me during our first meeting, I must confess, but in subsequent weeks I had reason to mentally refer to Herbert West as “Dr Death”. But I get ahead of my story.
I was examining Dr West at the Brook War Hospital—formerly the Brook Fever Hospital at Shooter’s Hill—on a very quiet Monday morning. Traffic had been rerouted around the great array of brick buildings, and only the luffing and chattering of a great outside banner exhorting “Quiet for the Wounded” came in through the open windows. West’s head was bandaged, but his limbs proved to be sound and, more importantly, whole. I had grown numb of performing endless amputations upon otherwise healthy young men that year.
The report said that Major West and an assistant had been working in a field hospital in Saint Eloi when it had been struck by a German shell, making the spot an unsightly charnel house of a blast crater—for the greater portion of Dr West’s work had to do with the surgical removal of traumatized limbs. The assistant, whose name I never did learn, had been conveyed to the King George Hospital in Waterloo.
“Miraculous that you survived,” I remarked to the man, not only out of conversational necessity, but to ascertain if he suffered from shell-shock, a common enough malady among those brave soldiers who survived German artillery attacks.
The major’s response was clear and pithy.
“Pray tell, where is this wretched place?” he demanded coldly, donning a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles.
After I informed the major that he was safe and secure in a London military hospital, our conversation grew professional.
“Have you…many dead?”
“None as yet. But expectations are optimistic in that regard,” I told him bluntly. “Why do you ask?”
“My professional interest lies in that direction…” he said vaguely.
“What direction?”
“With the…dead.”
This naturally quickened my interest, for I am also keen to learn about the experiences of my American colleagues across the pond. But when I pressed Dr West, he grew surly and evasive; a fact I attributed to the extreme hardships he had lately endured.
Changing the subject, I formally introduced myself.
“I am Dr John Watson, in charge of this ward.”
The curiously blue eyes, which had been wandering about the room as if in search of something unguessable, suddenly careened in the direction of my own frank gaze.
“Not the Dr Watson who had been in service to the famous Sherlock Holmes?”
“I confess a certain portion of my younger years were so occupied,” I said, wishing to change the subject. But West would have none of it.
“I should like to meet this outstanding man, about whom so much is written.”
“I am afraid that Mr. Holmes has been retired some years now, and passes his remaining time comfortably on a farm near Eastbourne these days. He does not often receive visitors.”
Dr West grew coldly insistent. “Still, I would very much like to meet Holmes. My work would interest him greatly.”
“Precisely upon what lines do you work?” I asked.
“That,” Dr West responded, “is only for the ears of Mr. Holmes himself. And no other.”
I ignored the veiled slight, saying only, “Perhaps when you are better, such a meeting might be arranged.”
Dr West tore his gaze from mine, but not before I detected a flash of ill-repressed anger toward me. In this rude gesture I took it that the tow-headed medical man was rarely refused a request.
Returning to my rounds of the convalescent ward, I recorded that Dr West had suffered a moderate concussion, but showed little sign of shell-shock, although I reserved the right to alter my initial diagnosis at a later date.
In the days that followed, the curious American physician grew stronger, and my diagnosis held unaltered. In less than a fortnight, Dr West was up and about, assisting the staff in the caring of the sick and wounded; for I had requested and received permission to reassign him to the hospital, he not yet being fit enough to return to the field, but very sorely needed here.
By that time the ill were threatening to push the war-wounded out of their cots. For the first wave of severe influenza victims began to accumulate, baffling and frustrating all efforts to administer to them.
Although ours was now a military facility, its past as a sanatorium where victims of Scarlet Fever were treated, naturally came into play. Those of you familiar with this scourge that had been spawned by the foul conditions of trench warfare in Europe need no reminders of its horrors. But for those who have been spared the details, I will write only that the poor victims often exhibited mild symptoms in the morning, only to expire by early evening, their skins turning a cyanotic blue, with a bloody froth upon their lips as they suffocated.
The progress of the new disease was shocking in its mortality as well as its unheard-of rapidity. The healthiest were hit hardest, contrary to earlier such plagues, to which the young and elderly alike typically succumbed. Pneumonia was the ultimate cause of death. Nothing could be done for these unfortunates. There appeared to be no cure discoverable. Had any remedy existed, the unchecked speed with which the infection overwhelmed its victims would surely have outpaced any antidote applied in the early stages of the progress of the disease.
Soon, the contagion became an epidemic. They perished by the hundreds, then by the thousands. It was appalling.
The epidemic was so ferocious and all-consuming of civilians that it was initially thought to be a war-weapon unleashed by the Central Powers to forestall its increasingly inevitable defeat. But the Germans and their allies were likewise affected, so that theory was soon dismissed out of hand.
During the first weeks of struggle to deal with the crisis, Dr West turned his attention to the conundrum.
“It may be possible to save some of these,” he remarked to me one day.
“By what means?” I blurted out.
“The dead succumb to pneumonia of the lungs. The remainder of their tissues and vital organs remain unravaged, and presumably undamaged.”
“I do not follow your trend, Dr West.”
Dr West eyed me with his uncomfortably direct, unblinking gaze. “I had been conducting experiments upon the worst of our casualties in the field, Dr Watson. Some of my discoveries might be applied here. I will need access to a pharmacological laboratory.”
I was hesitant, but the chorus of gasping and choking victims punished my sensibilities most vexingly. The pleas for respite, the remorseless cyanosis creeping over previously healthy features, overwhelmed my reluctance.
I saw to it that Dr West had access to whatever he required.
That first night, the American major worked feverishly as I slept on a cot, exhausted from dealing with suffering and unbelievable horror as I did for days upon end. Days with no end. And no end in sight.
The next morning, Dr West awoke me rather roughly, displaying a hypodermic needle which he had charged to capacity with a potion of his own concocting.
“My chemical exciter is ready for testing, Dr Watson.”
“Whatever is it?” I demanded, getting up.
“Dr West, I cannot allow you to experiment upon my poor, suffering patients. It would be wholly unethical.”
Dr West quirked his self-satisfied mouth in a matter I grew to loathe.
“What about those who have already passed?” he countered.
“What would that accomplish, man? The dead are dead—most profoundly so.”
“Permit me to prove you different,” he said in an unctuous tone dangerously close to a sneer.
Had the situation not been so horrific, so maddeningly dire, I would of course have refused. But all hope had been lost. The influenza was ravaging the hospital, contaminating its overworked staff, and crossing over to the war wounded, decimating them.
I nodded my assent, unable to give voice to permission that would have poisoned my tongue in a less extreme time.
Smiling thinly, Dr West took his instrument to the morgue where the dead were stacked under white sheeting, awaiting the trucks to haul them away for burial, much as the victims of the Black Plague were removed by carts in a bygone era that now seemed no less terrible than ours.
West went among them, lifting soiled sheets, feeling the cooling flesh with the touch of a man accustomed to such charnel work. I began to think of the American major as an undertaker or embalmer, not a physician of the living.
At last West found a specimen that seemed to meet with his professional, if ghoulish, approval. Without hesitation or preparation, he plunged the needle into the forearm of a strapping young man the colour of pale clay.
Then he stood back, the corpse sheet clutched in one pale hand. In that fearful moment, I was reminded of Shelly’s supremely arrogant Dr Frankenstein.
Not a minute passed, when the bare chest of the wretch gave a spasmodic jerk. Suddenly the dead face commenced twitching, eyelids fluttered alarmingly.
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not Page 11
