The cult was almost completely forgotten in the modern era, and the only mention in antiquity was by a monk in Lindisfarne in the eighth century. He described it as an unspeakable blasphemy that must not be mentioned. The other fact—if it could be classified as such—was that the sigil signified the above and the below—the stars and the earth, waiting for the sky-gods who would return one day to fulfill a promise of leading us to some vague, better, future.
It was all rather wishy-washy, to my mind.
“I may have been right, Holmes,” I said. “It all sounds like a case of rich men with too much time on their hands playing silly sods—wasn’t there a gathering of Mithras worshippers in the Temple a few years back? And wasn’t that just an excuse for them to imbibe too much liquor and fondle some ladies of rather loose morals?”
Holmes sighed. “You may indeed be correct in your assumption, Watson. I cannot yet see the connection between this frippery and the murders. But there is one. I would stake my reputation on it.”
Holmes had managed to stay still for the time it took to smoke a pipe, but as soon as I handed the papers back to him, he jumped to his feet.
“Bearding the Scottish lion in his den it is, then. Come, Watson; it is time to find out if our Mr. Mains is involved in anything more than injudicious drinking and wenching.”
I had Holmes wait long enough for me to fetch my service revolver. When he saw that I was armed, he lifted his stout cane from the rack in the hallway, and slapped the heavy head in the palm of his hand.
“Let us see if we can stir up some trouble,” he said, and then smiled. “I’m sure Lestrade will like that.”
3
The Mains residence was a large detached dwelling in a row of similar buildings to the north of Russell Square—the sort of area stockbrokers and insurance men flee back to after their days in the city, a small oasis of relative calm in the teeming urban bustle. I have heard rumors that local policemen can get paid under the table for putting in extra patrols in this vicinity. Seeing this particular street, I could quite believe it—we weren’t far from some rather rough areas, but this avenue was even quieter than some of the leafy suburbs further out of town. Our carriage was the only traffic.
After alighting, we went though an open gate and along a short driveway that led up to an imposing front door. Holmes rapped, using a large cast-iron knocker that showed the Lion Rampant crest of Scotland—another clue that we might be in the right place after all.
A butler who looked as if he would be more at home watching the door in a Glasgow bar showed us inside. He may have been a mute, for he didn’t speak a word, and did not ask our names. When I looked over at Holmes, he raised an eyebrow and smiled.
“It seems we are expected, Watson. The old-boy network has been at work; I suspect the tobacconist has several more coins in his pocket.”
The silent butler led us into a very grand library, opulently built in mahogany and leather, containing shelf after shelf of fine tomes that looked as if they had never been touched, never mind read. The whole room had that new, clean feeling you would never encounter in an old library, and I had a feeling it had been put together sometime in the last year or so at the earliest.
Mains stood by an imposing marble fireplace—a small, stocky man with very bushy black eyebrows and a mop of gray hair that he tried, unsuccessfully, to keep in check with lashings of oil that I smelled clear across the room. He was dressed for dinner, and had a brandy snifter in one hand and a cigarillo in the other—Moroccan, with a gold band.
“Whatever you have to say, make it quick,” he said, addressing Holmes directly. “I have business to attend to in half an hour.”
“Good,” Holmes said, dropping into a chair and setting about lighting up a smoke. “Then shall we talk about Hackney? I’m sure Lestrade of the Yard will be particularly pleased to hear about your meetings in St. Columba’s church, and the painted sigil on the wall—the same sigil that overlooks six dead bodies in another church on the edge of the marshes.”
The small Scotsman went pale, and took a deep gulp of his brandy before he was composed enough to reply.
“I can assure you, sir, there is nothing untoward going on in St. Columba’s—nothing that would concern the great Sherlock Holmes. And as for Hackney—I have no idea what you are blathering about. If you are accusing me of involvement in some nefarious activity, I must ask you to leave immediately.”
Holmes had his smoke going to his satisfaction, and blew a series of concentric smoke rings in the man’s direction.
“In that case, you would not mind inviting us to one of your meetings? I am available tonight, as it happens.”
“Out of the question,” Mains replied. “I cannot change my plans for the evening at your whim, sir.”
“I think you’ll find that you can,” Holmes said quietly. “I believe you know my brother, Mycroft?” The Scotsman went pale again, and sucked hard on his cigar as Holmes continued. “Mycroft expects you to offer me every courtesy in any request I might make of you in regard to your meetings.”
I knew that was an outright lie—but the Scotsman didn’t know that. He looked ready to argue, but Mycroft’s name carries significant weight in the corridors of power and the highest echelons of the business world, and it was indeed enough in this case for the Scotsman to acquiesce to Holmes’ request. He did not, however, have to be pleased about it, and it showed.
“Very well, then,” he said, tossing the remains of his brandy into the fire where it flared and sparked. “It so happens that my business and yours now coincide this evening. We have a meeting scheduled, and I am sure you will find it most educational. Give me ten minutes to change; it can get dashed filthy in the church. The others will be arriving at eight. I can assure you, it’s all above board—and I am hopeful I might even be able to convince a rational man like yourself to join our cause. But you’re right—first you must see for yourself.”
I saw something in the man’s glance—an almost boyish desire for us to believe him. He looked less like a murderer than any man I have ever seen.
I commented on it to Holmes when we were left alone in the library.
“I saw it too, Watson. Either he is a very good liar, or he has been deceived. Either way, as he has said, we will only know when we see it for ourselves. Keep a hand on your pistol—I suspect things might be starting to move more swiftly.”
3
The night had grown bitterly cold, and we had scarcely gone ten yards from the front door when I started to regret leaving the comfort and warmth of the library.
Mains seemed oblivious to the weather and had turned most eager to tell us all about his meetings—all pretense at secrecy flown now that the decision had been made that we should be allowed to know his business.
“You must agree, Mr. Holmes, that the world has seen too much of war in this past century?” he said.
“I would be a fool to disagree,” Holmes replied. “And Doctor Watson here has firsthand experience of much of it.”
“And I pray I never have to see any more,” I added.
Mains grew animated, a man expounding on a subject that had caught his passion. “Then what if I told you there was a way—a quick way—to bring about world peace? What if I told you we could be instrumental in ushering in a brave new world with no conflict—a new age of scientific enlightenment?”
“I would say you have had rather too much of your own brandy,” Holmes replied. “Human nature being what it is, and given the state of the world as it is today, I find that particular outcome to be unlikely in the extreme.”
“But it is something that would be worth the effort, is it not?”
“That depends on the cost,” Holmes replied. “And no amount of verbal fencing out here in the snow will get us anywhere. You are saying that you have a noble reason for your nighttime excursions in the church?”
“Noble? In the main, yes, although without wars, trade could flow more freely and I would also be better off. You
see, Mr. Holmes, I am a practical man at heart, not given to flights of fancy—not unless I have seen for myself that the future can be made real, for all of us.”
By now I had the man pegged as a zealot. I’ve met many fanatics in my time, and never found one that could be trusted as far as I could throw him. However, he might possess a clue that would lead us to solving the Hackney crime, so I kept my peace and decided to reserve judgement until we saw what he had to offer. Holmes seemed inclined to do the same, and kept silent as we turned into Russell Square and made once more for the old church.
3
A huddle of well-dressed men stood just inside the church doorway, and they were, to a man, surprised, if not shocked, to see Holmes and me; our presence started some heated discussion between Mains and the others which took place at the far end of the nave. Holmes seemed to be enjoying himself.
“If nothing else comes out of tonight, Watson, at least we will have had some entertainment.”
“It would seem so,” I replied. “We have arrived at the dressing-up-in-silly-costumes part.”
Mains seemed to have persuaded the rest of the group that we were not in any way a threat to their activities; they were all already donning long hooded robes. The boys had been right—the robes did indeed make them look like “mad monks.”
None of them so much as looked at us as they moved silently to stand in front of the painted sigil. Mains was last to put on a robe, and he came over to where we stood before joining the others.
“There is no trickery here,” he said. “No illusion. All that you will see and hear is real. As real as you or I.”
And with that cryptic remark, he left us at the back of the church and joined the rest of the group under the painted sigil.
3
The event started with some atonal chanting that grated on the ears and made me recall some of the acts I had seen in the music hall. It was also rather comical, and I started to think we were on the wrong track after all—it did indeed seem like nothing more than rich men playing silly sods.
Thankfully, the chanting did not last long. Mains moved to the front and raised his arms.
I do not rightly know what I expected, but I was surprised by the dancing aura of lights that rapidly filled the church and cast capering shadows all around us. The lights seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. They were accompanied by a distant hum that grated and caused my teeth to ache. I smelled the sudden tang of vinegar in my nostrils.
The light and color coalesced and thickened, hanging in a flattened oval about the size and shape of a large serving platter in the air between Mains and the sigil. I looked closely but saw no sign of any strings, no indication that any trickery was involved. If an illusion, it was a dashed good one, worthy of any stage.
The surface of the oval dulled to a flat gray and an image gradually formed—a head appeared, out of focus at first, and then sharpening to clarity as a voice spoke, loud and echoing through the church as loud as any vicar’s sermon.
“Welcome to your new beginning.”
I hardly heard the words—I knew the speaker, and knew I was looking at something impossible, for the man was dead—I had seen his body in the morgue. And yet it was the face of John Green that looked out over the church from within the image, and he smiled as he spoke.
3
I do believe I might have stepped forward and stopped proceedings then and there, disgusted that this mummery saw fit to desecrate the image of the dead in so blatant a fashion, but Holmes put a hand on my arm, and a finger to his lips.
“Not yet,” he mouthed silently.
We watched as Green—or his disembodied head, at least—spoke to the rapt congregation in the church.
“I come to you tonight from the farthest reaches of our planetary system—a place so dark, so remote our scientists do not yet know of its existence. And yet it is here, on Yuggoth, where mankind’s ultimate future may yet be born. I have already shared with you details of some of the benefits—and you, and our brethren across the globe, know only too well that the ones I serve are real, and here to help us at this crucial stage of our development. Our task now is to persuade our leaders of the right of our cause.”
It struck me to be a singularly uninspiring call to action—there was nothing there to get the old blood pumping, as if it had been written by someone with no sense of what might appeal to a man’s soul.
I turned to Holmes, intending to remark on the banality of it all, but he wasn’t paying attention to anything on the floor of the church. His gaze was fixed high in the broken rafters above. I tried to peer through the gloom to ascertain what had caught his attention, but saw nothing save a deeper patch of blackness in the shadows.
The congregation still had their full gaze on Green’s face.
“The time is coming—and soon—when we shall make the world take notice. Be prepared my friends. We will meet soon, in a better world.”
The image faded, the oval shape fell apart into so much light and shadow, and Mains lowered his arms. It seemed the brief show was over.
Again I turned to Holmes to look for his opinion of what had happened, but he was no longer at my side. I looked up to see him picking his way across what was left of the roof, using his cane as a support. And he wasn’t alone—he was closing in on the deeper shadow I had noted, but before he got within three yards of it, it moved and spread, like a crow opening its wings. The tang of vinegar got stronger still. There was a brief commotion in the rafters, a flurry and rattle, and then there was just Holmes up there, looking down at us with a puzzled look on his face. He swung himself down and landed, light as a cat, at my side.
“Yet again he was too fast for me—but I am getting his measure, Watson. I shall have him the next time.”
3
The crowd dispersed silently, leaving only Mains alongside us. He shucked off the robe and smiled.
“Well, gentlemen? What did you think? Did I not tell you there was no wrong-doing to find here?”
“On the contrary,” Holmes said softly. “I see the worst kind of wrongdoing of all—I see treachery, possibly even treason.”
Mains could not have looked more shocked had he been struck. “We are working for a better future for all …”
“No,” Holmes said, interrupting. “I believe you have been duped by a greater mind than yours. There is no future waiting for you on your current path—only death and misery.”
Mains mustered up some bravado.
“I have been promised …”
Holmes interrupted again. “And similar promises, I imagine, were made to poor John Green.”
“I do not know that name,” Mains replied.
“No. But you do know the face. Tell me, Mr. Mains, who is that man who conveys the messages to you?”
The Scotsman shrugged. “We do not know. He appeared to me in my country house several months ago and we began our mission there. All I know is that I trust him implicitly—he is an explorer, a hero, the first of many.”
“And the last of a few,” Holmes said sadly. “What if we were to take you to Scotland Yard, right now, and show you his body? He has been lying there for some time now, and was certainly not talking to you from some mythical planet tonight, for he is most assuredly dead.”
Mains shook his head. “That is not possible.”
“Nevertheless, it is the truth,” I replied. “If you do not trust Holmes, trust me, as a medical man.”
Mains looked back and forth from Holmes to me. “No. I will not have it. This is one of Mycroft’s schemes, isn’t it? He is trying to stop the future. But it cannot be fought. It is coming, whether the old guard likes it or not.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left. I expected Holmes to follow, but he was once again looking up into the rafters, lost in thought.
“Should we go after him?” I asked,
Holmes took his time in replying. “No—I think he believes what he is saying, more is the pity. Loath as I am to admit it, w
e must inform Mycroft of what has transpired here—and find out what he has not told us.”
Chapter Eleven
EF
It was past ten o’clock when we arrived at the Diogenes Club. We were kept waiting, compelled to silence as ever is the case in that establishment. We stood in the reception area for more than twenty minutes before we were shown through to the back room that doubled as Mycroft’s office when he was not in Whitehall.
“And you saw this … apparition?” Mycroft said incredulously as I related our story. Holmes had left the job to me, knowing that Mycroft would not believe me capable of subterfuge in this matter.
“It was no apparition,” I replied. “It was some kind of projection, the like of which I have never before seen. But it did not have the feel of anything supernatural—it felt, and looked, mechanical—a piece of advanced engineering was my guess.”
Mycroft poured me a glass—a second glass—of his best sherry. It was obvious the tale had given him pause for thought, and he sighed deeply as he sat back in his chair.
“And Mains is at the center of this … conspiracy? You are sure of it?”
“He told us himself that he was the instigator, after an encounter with—whatever it was—in his Scottish home.”
Mycroft turned to Holmes. “Theories?”
“Several,” Holmes said curtly. “But not enough facts as yet. You should have told me you knew about the sigil. It might have saved time.”
“And you should have told me you had the ring,” Mycroft said. “Let us not quarrel—not tonight. There is work to be done.”
“The defense of the realm is your domain, not mine,” Holmes said, and stood as if to leave.
“And murder is yours,” Mycroft said softly. “I fear there will be many more if you do not help me. Sit down. Let me tell you what I know. And what I surmise. Just let me get something started first.”
Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors by William Meikle Page 6
