“Have you ever heard of such a thing? A red-headed soul-sucker?”
“Er… no.”
“Then why would you assume such a thing exists?”
“Again, I’ve no idea.”
“Do you imagine that this would be a red-headed beast that sucks souls, or a regular-looking one that sucks the souls of only red-headed victims?”
“I suppose… well… hmmm… no idea.”
“And why would you blame it with our present—”
“Honestly, Watson, I sometimes think your primary goal in any conversation is to force me to say ‘no idea’ as often as you can. It is twisted and unkind!”
Watson threw one hand up against his brow, as if he were the victim of a sudden headache. “Holmes… focus now, and think. What does it mean that the bank is so close to the pawnshop?”
“Well, let’s see… er… When Jabez Wilson needs to make a deposit, he doesn’t have far to go?”
“I think the point would be better stated that Mr. Spaulding won’t have far to go to make a rather significant withdrawal. Don’t you see? He’s tunneling into the bank! There is no such thing as the League of Red-Headed Men! There never was! Mr. Spaulding shows up out of the blue at a humble little place of work whose cellar is in suspicious proximity to a bank’s vault, agrees to work for half-wages, and immediately displays an interest in his employer’s cellar. Remember? He got Mr. Wilson to let him have it for a darkroom. Well, he’s now situated in a safe, unobserved spot, only twenty yards from his target. But he’s still got a problem: he can’t very well dig up Mr. Wilson’s cellar with the old fellow around. No problem. Spaulding is far smarter than his employer. It’s not long until he realizes Mr. Wilson is rather conscious of his red hair and also somewhat proud of his penmanship. Spaulding gets a red-headed confederate and formulates a plan which is as ingenious as it is farcical. Suddenly, Mr. Wilson is informed of the bequest of a previously unheard-of billionaire whose legacy will furnish him with two hundred a year and allow him to feel good about both his unusual coloration and his penmanship. Voila! Now Spaulding and his confederate have four hours per day to dig, uninterrupted—hence the state of his trousers.”
“But if the league was such a brilliant invention, Watson, why would Spaulding close it?”
“Because his tunnel is finished. This also explains the darkest development of this whole story: the invitation to Mr. Wilson to go to his own cellar this Saturday night.”
“Why is that dark, Watson? May not a man visit his own cellar if he wishes?”
“Not if he’s very wise. Remember, Holmes, it’s now connected by tunnel to a bank vault. A fact that—in an investigation following the robbery of said bank—is likely to be of interest to any number of Scotland Yard’s finest. I’m sure they might have more than a few pointed questions for Mr. Wilson, but it probably wouldn’t take him long to spill the whole strange story of the League of Red-Headed Men and fix the Yard’s attention exactly where it has fixed mine: on Vincent Spaulding. Better for Spaulding to silence his employer’s tongue.”
“They’re going to murder him?”
“So the facts suggest. Think, Holmes, if you’ve got a tunnel in place, when is the best time to stage a robbery? The bank closes early of a Saturday. All Spaulding has to do is wait until the pawnshop closes at five or six, rob the bank, murder Wilson in the privacy of his own cellar, and make his getaway knowing neither crime is likely to be discovered until the bank opens on Monday morning.”
“Fiendish! Brilliant!” I declared. “But… er… we’re sure it isn’t simply a red-headed soul-sucker?”
“No! Why would you think so?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But I seem to be rather convinced, all of a sudden. It all just seems so… so very normal, the way you describe it. So very dull. Is there no aspect of this case that seems peculiar? Nothing to keep it a case for us, rather than for the Yard? I was so certain when I met Mr. Wilson.”
Watson got rather uncomfortable-looking and admitted, “There was one small thing. Do you remember when Mr. Wilson told us Mr. Spaulding had a white splash of acid on his brow?”
“No.”
“Well, he did. It’s a common enough term for a dermatological condition, known as vitiligo—a localized loss of skin pigmentation. But the discolored spot on Mr. Spaulding’s head gives every indication that it might be actual acid. I could smell it when I met him. I could see where it had dripped down and scalded little holes in his jacket.”
I think I got very excited. “Watson! I know him! Did he have a great row of earrings in each ear?”
“Really, Holmes? Earrings are the identifying characteristic you require? Not a face partially constructed of a self-renewing well of acid?”
“Stomachs make acid, don’t they? Maybe he just keeps a part of his stomach on his face. Anybody might. But earrings, Watson: did he have them?”
“Yes,” Watson sighed.
“John Clay! I promise you, Watson. That man is John Clay.”
“Who is he, Holmes? How do you know him?”
“He’s a thief! Often employed by Moriarty’s band. Oh, he’s a smart one! Be wary of him, Watson.”
“Moriarty? Capital! I’ve been most interested to interview members of Moriarty’s old gang. Has this John Clay any magical abilities, Holmes?”
“He never needed them. Really, Watson, the man is that clever. Moriarty used to send him out after this magic bit or that one, and John Clay would disappear, sometimes for months on end, then it would come out he’d been living as an archbishop in Rome and had just conned the Swiss Guard out of the very item Moriarty had named, straight from the Vatican vault.”
“Well,” said Watson, cagily, “I’m afraid he’s about to meet his match!”
“And probably a red-headed soul-sucker.”
“No. Why do you persist in thinking so?”
“Who knows? Something to do with my brain, I suspect.”
“Get your coat, Holmes.”
“Where are we going?”
“The bank, Warlock! The bank!”
* * *
The bank manager’s name was Mr. Merryweather. He wasn’t all that merry, I thought. But he did remind one of weather. London’s weather, specifically. Cold, foggy, grim and unwelcome. I had a very comfortable chair to sit on while Watson detailed the dastardly plan he was sure he’d unveiled. There was only one problem.
“Preposterous, sir,” Mr. Merryweather thundered. “That vault is not in use.”
“But…” Watson spluttered, splutterfully, “whoever heard of a bank with no vault? Or even worse: a bank with a vault that didn’t use it?”
“This is merely a neighborhood branch of a larger bank,” Merryweather blustered. “The small safe on the main floor more than suffices to hold the modest reserves we require. On the rare occasion we find ourselves in possession of sufficient funds to represent a sizable loss, they are conducted under guard to our head office that very night!”
“The vault is empty, then?” Watson wondered.
“Nobody knows what’s down there. Nobody goes there since—” Mr. Merryweather made one of those faces people make when they’ve just said something they oughtn’t.
“Since?” Watson prompted.
“I regret I cannot say. The instructions of this bank’s founder are quite clear and it is as much as my job is worth to speak this institution’s secrets. I thank you gentlemen for your efforts. You have come because you deemed that we were in danger and you have done your civic duty by informing us. Nevertheless, I can assure you there is no threat. Good day, sirs.”
On the way out, I saw a picture of the founder. I knew him! It was Ezekiah Hopkins! Same fellow as in the other picture, but this one didn’t have smoking eyes, so it was boring and I didn’t mention it. Besides, I had other things to think of. Watson was fuming. As we stepped out, I asked him, “Do you need to get into that vault, Watson?”
“It would certainly be felicitous,” he growled. “I had hoped to a
wait the criminals in the darkness of that vault on Saturday afternoon. With Grogsson or Lestrade by the pawnshop to ensure our men did not back up through the tunnel and escape, we could have them trapped. It would be the perfect pinch!”
“See here, Watson, never let it be said that I consider myself above a little vault-breaking. Not when there’s a friend in need! And a red-headed ninny, too! What do you think? Should we waylay Mr. Merryweather and make off with his keys?”
“No!”
“A bit of magic, then? I could melt the front wall right off the whole bank! Then we could walk in, clear as—”
“We will certainly not be employing any magic, Holmes.”
“Well… an elephant, perhaps? He could pull the front wall off, I should think.”
“Holmes, there is no need for such extraordinary measures. Although, you have given me an idea. Perhaps we might enlist the aid of a certain animal…”
“Do you need me to start looking up elephant dealers, Watson?”
“I had something quite a bit smaller in mind.”
* * *
At three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, a grubby little urchin rushed through the front door of Jabez Wilson’s pawnshop, grabbed a display box of pocket watches and shouted, “Yah! Yah! Bugger the toffs! Smash the state! Oh, and by the way: the Queen looks like a horse’s arse!” This is exactly the primary fear of all pawnshop owners. They understand, with perfect clarity, that the underclasses are planning to betray and topple the entire British social order, sinking us into an age of darkness and anarchy which begins exactly the way everybody with a lick of sense knows it will: with petty theft from pawnshops.
The thief turned to rush out the door, but found it already blocked by Vincent Spaulding/John Clay. He had his arms folded across his chest and a little sneer that said, “Nobody around here knows it, but I’m a bit of a criminal mastermind myself and I’ve just got to ask: that was your whole plan?”
The horrified waif turned and bounded into the shop, nearly into the arms of the portly idiot who ran the place. Wilson gave a leisurely sort of lunge, but this was easily avoided and the lad made it to the shop’s back room— notable for its possession of the shop’s back door.
“He’ll make the alley!” Wilson shouted. “Get around, Vincent! Get around and he’ll have nowhere to go!”
Wilson lurched out the back door, leaving his assistant to bolt through the front and out around the side of the building, to cut off the suspect’s escape. No sooner had John Clay made it around the corner to the alley than the urchin’s confederates made their move. Watson and I hustled across the street and down into the shop’s cellar. We had only a few minutes. We expected it should take no time at all for Wilson to find his discarded box of watches but—though he had come out on the thief’s heels and Spaulding had blocked the only route of escape—we knew he would find the alleyway deserted. It would take more than a confused head-scratcher like Jabez Wilson to look down at the innocuous little rodent nibbling garbage on one side of the alley way and say, “Ah! That’s probably my thief, right there.”
Good old Wiggles! Even Watson was growing fond of him, I’m sure of it.
Of course, we were still left with the problem of the tunnel. If we could not find it, or if Watson was wrong and there was none, we should soon be explaining to Wilson and Clay why we had elected to raid their cellar. Look as I might, I could see no trace of the damn thing.
“Watson, where is it?”
He smiled at me and said, “You see those tubs of chemicals over there? The developing agent and the fixer?”
“Yes.”
“A darkroom needs those. You see those wires strung up with the pins on them, to suspend the prints as they dry?”
“I see them.”
“A darkroom needs those as well. What it does not need, strictly speaking, is an oversized framed poster of Trevelyan’s Aerial Ballet that covers one entire side of the room and which seems to be… oh yes… look over here… this side is hinged to the wall. Come on, Holmes.”
Watson swung back the poster, and so we made our way through John Clay’s tunnel into the vault of the City & Suburban Bank. We popped up through a loosened flagstone and—by the light of Watson’s bull’s-eye lantern— discovered a dark and dusty room. One wall was composed of aged iron bars, beyond which lay a narrow corridor and stairs up towards the main floor of the bank. There were a few large wooden crates scattered about, dusty and forgotten. Watson threw his bag down on one of these and whispered, “Come on, Holmes, let’s get set up, eh?”
What a thorough fellow Watson is! He had everything. The lantern to see by, his pistol to waylay John Clay, handcuffs to secure him and his red-headed cohort. He’d brought break-in tools in case we should need them—even though we didn’t—and to pass the time until John Clay’s appearance, sandwiches and cards. I was just about to protest that that was all well and good for Watson, when he produced a little pot of soup and a couple of cold slices of toast. And yes, I understand that there may be some debate about whether cold toast is toast at all or if it’s just bread that’s been cooked two different ways. But I can tell you this: when your good friend takes the trouble to smuggle some into a crime scene for you, it is toast.
We settled in to wait. Watson said we needn’t quench the lantern until at least five o’clock when the pawnshop closed. So we played cards. I was having a grand old time, but as the minutes slipped by, Watson became ever more distracted and nervous.
“Holmes, something is wrong. I think… I think I was wrong.”
“You aren’t usually. That’s rather my job, Watson.”
“Thank you for saying so, but… no… look at all the dust. Merryweather wasn’t lying; this vault is clearly not in use.”
“So?”
“John Clay’s tunnel is complete. Now, if he were tunneling into a regular bank vault, he’d need to make his move on Saturday night, so he had a day and a half to escape before his crime was noticed. Yet, if the vault is disused, why would he wait? He might have already taken what he wanted. He might even have done it while the bank was open and nobody would be any the wiser, perhaps for years. And what does one even steal from a disused vault? Can there be anything here of sufficient value to justify such effort, time and expense on Clay’s part?”
“Well, there are plenty of boxes lying about. Shall we see what’s in them?”
“Good idea, Holmes. Hand me that crowbar. Quiet as you can, now. We don’t want them to hear us down the tunnel…”
Do you know how decades-old wooden crates don’t open? Quietly. Nevertheless, in a few moments, Watson and I had the top off the box that stood closest to the center of the room. A sheet of dull metal lay inside.
“Lead,” I observed.
Watson pulled back a corner of it and said, “Lead foil. And look beneath it, Holmes.”
As my friend peeled back the dull gray sheeting, the gleam of treasure struck my eye.
“What?” I cried. “Gold? Why would anybody do that? Has somebody said to themselves, ‘Well, gold is nice, but it just isn’t heavy enough. Ah! I know! I’ll pack it in lead!’”
“Lead is soft, Holmes. Coins can be packed in it to prevent them rubbing against each other and wearing. Look, these coins are new-minted. By God, there must be two thousand coins in this crate. French, by the look of them. Made in 1851. Judging by the date and the dust, it would seem someone has left a fresh-minted fortune abandoned down here for thirty years. Why? And why on earth has John Clay tunneled in here and neglected to steal it? The case grows in strangeness, Holmes, and I fear I have passed my depth. Something is wrong.”
And as Watson paced back and forth, audibly debating whether this was a clever lure for me, or whether John Clay had no interest in money but a desire to embarrass the bank, or whether he had intended some kind of mischief that could only be carried out in a vault that was not currently in use, I began to realize he was right.
Something was wrong.
As Wat
son passed one of the crates at the edge of the room, it gave an eager little bump.
Bump. Bump, answered one of its confederates, from across the room.
“Er… Watson,” I noted, “something is wrong.”
He paused his current conspiracy supposition long enough to huff, “Yes, Holmes. That is what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last five minutes.”
“No, Watson. Something is wrong. Very wrong. Right-now wrong. Look out!”
With a sudden shriek, the crate behind Watson wrenched its own top off and emitted a twisting coil of hair.
Rather reddish hair, it must be said.
This crimson flood surged towards Watson and wrapped itself around his arms and neck. As the crate fell apart, it revealed a trio of grinning skulls. Some veneer of mummified flesh still clung to them, but for the most part, bones and hair were all that remained. Quite an astonishing amount of hair for only three fellows, I thought. It flowed from the domes of each skull like the tentacles of a squid, allowing the little blighters to scrabble this way and that like oversized spiders.
“Disgusting!” I cried. (By which I meant that they were wonderful.)
Even as I said it, the other crates began to crack and fail. From each of them erupted another duo, or trio, or… er… quado of red-headed heads. They burst forth from every corner of the room, grinning with a silent sort of undead glee. Cute little buggers! They looked quite pleased with themselves, as if they had fooled us completely, which—to give credit where it is due—they had. They swarmed at me, sending tendrils of red curls to bind my arms and legs.
And I let them.
Why not?
They only seemed to want to tie me up, so where was the harm? I knew I could free myself with a word— indeed, with a thought—the very moment I needed to. And it would be such a shame to disappoint them. I know they were only empty-eyed skulls, but really, there was such a sense of accomplishment in their demeanor… and they were so darling, in their way… I made up my mind not to harm the little fellows or dampen their fun unless I absolutely must.
Watson, I regret to say, was devoid of such considerations. He screamed and thrashed about in a most unseemly way as the little monsters herded us together into the center of the room. He even grabbed a screwdriver from his bag as he passed and flailed about pointlessly at his attackers with it. He’s a dear friend of mine, so it pains me to say so, but he can at times be utterly graceless.
Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual Page 21
