Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors by William Meikle

by William Meikle

  The city outside grew quiet as the clock ticked over, then chimed midnight. Still Holmes sat, bent over what was by now a small pile of papers, each scarcely bigger than my thumb. At one point he rose, stretched and headed for his bookshelves, then returned with two tomes that he perused for a time before returning to his work. I knew better than to interrupt at this juncture and left him to it.

  I heard Mrs. Hudson retire to bed around one, then everything fell silent. Holmes kept at it. At some point I dozed, not asleep, yet not exactly awake, only to sit up with a start at a noise that must only have been in my mind, for Holmes was still at the desk, working by the light of a single lamp. I lit two of the wall lights, then went over to check on his progress.

  This time he was happy to be interrupted.

  “We do indeed have something, Watson.” Holmes stood and stretched.

  “The writing itself seems to be of little value to us,” he said as he went to the mantel and retrieved his pipe and tobacco. I joined him by the fireside as he continued. “The papers are each immaculately transcribed with an African prayer for the dead—from Mali, if I had to make a guess—an entreaty that they be allowed safe passage into the underworld. I am sure you will agree that this can have little bearing on our search for our man. The paper itself is another matter.”

  He paused as he got his pipe lit to his satisfaction.

  “It took me some time to spot it, but each page has been sliced from a larger sheet. Have a look.”

  I went back to the desk. He had all the small pieces of paper grouped together in a rectangle, sandwiched between two thin panes of glass. They all fit together like pieces of a child’s puzzle, making what had once been a single sheet of paper.

  “There is a watermark,” Holmes said.

  I lifted the sandwich of glass and paper up to the light and saw that Holmes was right, although I could not quite make out any detail of the mark itself.

  Holmes continued, “And I can make out enough to ascertain that it has been made at some point in the past month in a mill in North Kent, to order for Mr. Gatherford himself.”

  Holmes seemed mightily pleased with himself, but I failed to see how the find moved us any closer to catching our man, and I told him so in no uncertain terms.

  Holmes merely smiled. “It means, Watson, that we have an approximate address outside the city from which to launch our search. Trust me; our man has gone to ground, and if I were he, I too would have fled the city before Mycroft began the crackdown. I have a notion we are on the right track—and I intend to start immediately in the morning.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  EF

  Holmes was as good as his word.

  I managed several hours of restless sleep before I was wakened by the sound of him loudly summoning Mrs. Hudson to prepare a light breakfast. By the time I was shaved, washed and dressed, the table was laid with scrambled eggs, toast and a pot of tea, none of which lasted more than a couple of minutes. I only had time to collect my smokes and reload my revolver before Holmes hustled me out into thin morning sunshine.

  We took a carriage to Charing Cross, hoping to catch a train to Kent. That was when we had our first indication that something was amiss. There were no trains passing either in or out of the city, and no sign of any in the immediate future. The presence of more than a score of armed soldiers on the concourse gave some indication of the seriousness of the matter. The populace at large seemed calm, and there was no indication in the morning papers of anything untoward beyond a report of a quarantine to prevent the spread of a disease currently affecting the north of France.

  “Mycroft has been busy indeed,” Holmes muttered.

  It did, however, mean that our plan to head for Kent had been thwarted—or so I thought. Holmes had other ideas. He led me back out to the front of the station and started making his way along the line of waiting carriages, attempting to find someone willing to take us south of the river and thence into Kent.

  We quickly found out that all such trips were prohibited under the new “quarantine” rules, and that the bridges were being monitored.

  “They’re all barricaded as far upstream as Richmond,” one driver said. “And there ain’t no sense in trying to go under the river either—the army is down there in the hundreds. Ain’t no way over unless I take you even further west—and then we’d be pushed to reach Kent much before late afternoon. It would cost you a pretty penny, too.”

  Holmes did not hesitate. “Would a guinea suffice?”

  Minutes later we were on our way, albeit clattering along in the complete opposite direction from that which we wanted to travel.

  3

  I was growing worried about Holmes again. He looked pale and wan, and it was obvious to me that he had not fully recovered from his wounded ribs. He sat opposite me, lips pursed, eyes hooded, gripping his stout malacca cane tightly—as I had brought my pistol, he too had brought a weapon, replacing the walking cane he had carried the night before with something a bit more lethal. There was a Toledo blade inside the stick that Holmes was capable of wielding with deadly force should it be required.

  For now, the cane was serving merely to keep Holmes upright, steadying him as the carriage rocked and swayed over the packed ruts of the roadway.

  “I have been thinking, Holmes,” I said, and that earned me a tight smile, but no retort, signifying, if I did not know already, that Holmes was not quite on top form. I was allowed to continue without interruption. “Gatherford has clearly perfected a technique for animating dead tissue—as a medical man that astounds me, but I have heard talk that this is not the first time it has been attempted, not by any means. What has me puzzled more than anything, though, is that he has also perfected a means of controlling the reanimated men—both before they are fully deceased and also after the bodies have clearly died and are rotting. I am quite at a loss as to how that might be explained.”

  Holmes, as I knew he would, had a theory in mind. “The human mind is capable of great wonders, Watson,” he replied. “The will is a powerful tool—and a powerful weapon. A strong-willed man can bend weaker minds to do his bidding—we have both seen that all too often, where a criminal becomes head of his fellows through a combination of brute strength, cunning and, most often, force of will. So we have that to consider. But there is also the effect of chemical intoxication—I am all too aware of the seductive power of opiates and how they can render the mind susceptible to being conditioned. When you combine that, as I believe Gatherford has done, with a potent form of mesmerism, then you have a man capable of controlling both will and flesh—even after the physical death of said body.”

  Holmes fell quiet again, then whispered a few words I struggled to catch. “The will is potent.”

  3

  We traveled in silence for quite some time. The day grew warm, almost stiflingly so, but as much of the early part of our trip was along the north bank of the river, we benefited from a slight breeze off the Thames that saved us a deal of discomfort. We passed several barricaded bridges policed by bored squaddies, but there was no sign of any trouble and no evidence that there had been any kind of outbreak. I could only hope that any contagion in the hospital had been contained with minimal loss of life, and I fretted at the fact that I was not there to help the afflicted. Finding—and stopping—Gatherford was going to have to be my way of making amends, and I resolved there and then to do all in my power to see justice done—for the living and for the dead.

  We finally turned south at Richmond and were able to cross the bridge with no interference. There was a heavy flow of traffic heading south: obviously, many people were uncomfortable staying in the city under quarantine conditions—or perhaps someone in the corridors of power had let slip that matters might not be quite so simple as the official statement had indicated. Whatever the cause, we were slowed considerably for a good hour due to the volume of traffic. The delay was not eased any by the presence of a line of policemen at the south end of the bridge who insist
ed on taking our names and addresses, along with providing us with a stern admonishment before allowing us to pass.

  “This is Mycroft’s doing,” Holmes said again. “Let us hope the precautions are adequate to the limits of the threat, for if anything does escape, either from that hospital or from the city itself, it may well never be contained again.”

  3

  After finally making it across Richmond Bridge we made good time through Kew, where the traffic eased considerably, and headed at a faster trot through South London. We halted near New Cross not long after noon for the driver to have the horses fed and watered, giving us a chance to stretch our legs and take on some sustenance of our own.

  The Cross Keys Inn opposite the stables was doing a brisk business, and we were lucky to find a quiet table in a corner away from prying eyes. I managed to pick up some snippets of conversation while at the bar ordering ale, but no one seemed to have any idea as to the nature of the need for quarantine.

  It being a British hostelry, there was naturally no end to speculation, which seemed to range from typhoid to a French military invasion and most things in between. What they would have done had I dropped a mention of the walking dead into the conversation, the Lord alone knows.

  Holmes hardly spoke a word during our half-hour stay in the bar and barely touched the bread and cheese. He did manage to finish off his ale and smoke two pipes, although he had also developed a rumbling cough that I did not like the sound of at all. I entreated him to call off the trip and return to Baker Street for rest and more recuperation, but he would have none of it.

  “Gatherford will not rest. I have a sense that he is a man on a mission, Watson. And the only way to deal with a fanatic is to be as single-minded in return. I will rest when the job is done, and not before.”

  That was all he would say on the subject, and when we returned to the carriage he once again slid into an almost-trance-like state that brooked no conversation. I had to content myself with watching the sights and sounds of the city and smoking a succession of cheroots as we slowly made our way to our destination.

  3

  We finally arrived in Chislehurst in late afternoon. The driver dropped us off outside the Post Office and had the carriage turned and rattling away almost before we got our bearings.

  Now that we had arrived, Holmes seemed to rouse himself into something like his old self. We made inquiries after Gatherford in the Post Office itself, in the local butcher’s shop, and in the Black Bull, where I found time for an excellent pint of hop-filled Kentish ale while Holmes questioned the bar staff.

  In the end, it was the local vicar who provided the breakthrough, although it cost Holmes two pints of ale and twenty minutes of back-and-forth chat before the voluble little man got to the point.

  “Gatherford? Oh, yes—a fine chap. Gives a lot to the church, you know? And always willing to lend a hand. I won’t have a bad word said about him, although there are plenty who think him a tad fanatical. Where would the world be without fanatics? Jesus had a touch of it himself in my opinion—perhaps more than a touch. As I was saying to Mrs. Green just this morning, I—”

  Holmes coughed, and not too discreetly at that. “Gatherford?” he asked.

  The vicar had just finished his second ale and seemed inclined to ask for another, but Holmes held his stare long enough to dissuade him of that notion.

  “I was getting to it,” he said. “I saw him just this morning—said hello over the Manse hedge. You’ll find him on Hole Lane, second on the right at the church and up the hill to the end. You can’t miss it—he has the large thatched property above the caves.”

  The last stage of the case of the lost husband began ten minutes later when we knocked on the door of the thatched house at the end of Hole Lane.

  Chapter Fourteen

  EF

  Gatherford himself answered the door, and he did not seem in the least surprised to see us. He did not have the air of a man who had tried to kill us less than twenty-four hours previously, but he still carried the same sense of composure and superiority I had noted in him on our last encounter. This man was supremely sure of himself, especially now that he had us in his domain. Like a spider after flies, he welcomed us into his home.

  “I have been expecting you, Holmes,” he said. “Somehow I knew that the six I left you with would not be enough. I do hope they did not cause you undue discomfort?”

  Holmes smiled thinly but kept quiet. I put my hand in my pocket, reaching for my pistol, but Holmes stopped me by putting a hand on my arm.

  “Let Watson keep his toy,” Gatherford said, softly and with no little hint of menace. “It will avail him naught in any case.”

  He showed us into a front parlor.

  Holmes’ malacca cane clacked on the slate floor each step of the way.

  3

  “Let me guess,” Gatherford said as he stood over a drink cabinet pouring a brandy for each of us. “I am a vile, evil man and I must be stopped before I bring about the downfall of the Empire and the end of civilization as we know it. Am I close?”

  “Well, you have certainly got the first part of that statement correct,” Holmes replied as he sat down in an armchair and took out his pipe. I noted that he kept his right hand mostly free and within inches of his cane.

  Gatherford motioned that I should take the seat next to Holmes and waited until I had sat before handing us each a generous snifter of brandy. I took a sip for appearances’ sake, then put the glass down on the small table next to me—I had a feeling a clear head was going to be needed before too long. I took out a cheroot, lit it, and watched Holmes closely, ready to follow his lead should the need for action arise.

  “You have not been fully apprised of the situation, Holmes,” Gatherford said. He sat opposite us, perfectly relaxed and smiling—a man without a care in the world. “I have backers, you see: men of power and influence, in this country and abroad. They are the men who keep the world running—captains of industry, as it were. And they are right behind my methods—they see the great gains in progress that can be made with a compliant, docile work force who need minimal maintenance and feeding and who do not need to be paid. It is an industrialist’s dream come true. And these men are more than willing to pay me handsomely for my secret. This time next year I shall be as rich as Croesus and twice as happy.”

  “But at what cost, man?” Holmes said.

  Gatherford smiled again, and it was all I could do to stop myself from leaping across the room and punching the grin off his face.

  “There is no great cost,” Gatherford replied. “Merely men who were as good as dead anyway. All I have done is expedite the matter in a manner that will most benefit their masters.”

  “Institutionalized slavery?” Holmes said softly.

  “Welcome to the future,” Gatherford replied.

  Holmes sat back, as if considering what had been said. “You want me to understand, don’t you?” he said quietly.

  Gatherford nodded. “We will need men like you—and your brother—on our side when the time comes to reveal the notion to the wider world.”

  “So tell me how it works.” Holmes said, keeping his voice steady. “Tell me the trick of it.”

  I knew my friend—I could see the tension in him waiting to be unleashed. Gatherford took Holmes at his word. “You will already have surmised some of it, I am sure,” Gatherford replied. “I acquired the chemistry from Haiti, but although they know how to make men compliant, their particular type of shuffling half-dead is not suited to hard work. For that, I needed to add opiates and some mesmeric techniques I picked up in France. Combine those with a method of my own for training the mind to perform repetitive tasks until the muscles remember and can do them almost mindlessly on my command, and there you have it—the trained, effective work force of the future. And there is a bonus in that the body remembers how to work even after death, given the right circumstances.”

  “And the sewn lips—the prayers for the dead?”

/>   “Belt and braces, old boy,” Gatherford said. “A bit of mumbo-jumbo that seems to aid in the efficacy of the transformation once bodily death has occurred. Don’t quite know how that works yet—but I will get to the bottom of it eventually. The important thing is that my backers are satisfied, and that I have started work on the first delivery. Would you like to see?”

  3

  The man’s fanaticism was shining brightly now, and he was clearly keen to entice Holmes to his cause. He rose.

  “I can show you right now, if you are willing. I bought this place for a reason, you see—close enough to London that my backers might easily visit, yet far enough out of town that I would not be disturbed in my work. And then there’s the fact that this is the perfect spot for keeping the whole thing under wraps until it can be revealed. Come—let me show you.”

  I was still mulling over what he might mean by the word “delivery” as he led us through the house to the rear and out into a well-appointed garden. The sun was setting by this time, casting long shadows ahead of us as we traversed a wide expanse of lawn to a concealed hut at the back, tucked away behind a hawthorn hedge.

  “Rather a small enterprise, is it not?” Holmes said, with more sarcasm than was usual. Once again Gatherford refused to rise to the bait. He used a key from his fob to open the hut door and revealed, not the expected hodge-podge of gardening tools, but a set of wooden steps leading down into what looked nothing less than a deep black pit.

  He took an oil lamp from a hook by the door and lit it with a match.

  “Never fear, gentlemen,” he said. “If I still wanted you dead, I would have ensured it happened far from here. We are going down into the dark, but there is nothing to worry about.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I muttered, but Gatherford either did not hear or chose to ignore me. He lifted the lamp ahead of him and started down the steps. Holmes waved that I should follow first. I put a hand on the grip of my pistol and followed the businessman down into the dark.