Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust

by James Lovegrove

  “I am alive, by the grace of God,” said he. “So it was pigeons for you, eh?”

  “You were attacked by something else?”

  “Rats. A plethora of rats. They came pouring in under the bedroom door. All were slick with water, and the damp trail they left indicates that their point of access was the bathroom.”

  “Up through the pipes, you mean.”

  “It is the clear inference. You armed yourself with a cricket bat. Very enterprising. My choice of weapon was the nearest heavy object to hand: a boot. I beat the rats with the heel of it from the safety of my bed, which became my fortress. They laid siege and some of them got past my defences, clawing their way up the bed frame and onto the mattress. Hence these minor injuries I have sustained. I was gnawed, but I was the victor in the end. I exterminated every last one of the vile things.”

  “What… What has happened here?” I said. “How come we have both been the victim of assault by wild creatures? Can every single animal in London have gone mad?”

  “Before anything else, let us make sure Mrs Hudson is well. Since you and I have been molested, perhaps she has too. I have not heard any untoward noises from her room, but it would be best to check.”

  A polite tap at Mrs Hudson’s bedroom door yielded no result. Holmes rapped louder, calling out our landlady’s name, until at last he was rewarded with a bleary-sounding, “Yes? What is it?”

  “Mrs Hudson, I apologise for disturbing you,” Holmes said through the door. “I take it you have been sound asleep.”

  “Up till now, yes.”

  “And you have been – how shall I put this? – in no way incommoded.”

  “Other than by a certain tenant waking me, I have not. I have lately taken to stuffing my ears with cotton wool before I go to bed, in order to ensure an uninterrupted night’s sleep. So often do you receive visitors at unsociable hours, Mr Holmes, sometimes ones incapable of continent behaviour, that I have felt the need for such measures. The last straw was the hullabaloo the other night.” She meant our fight with Allan Quatermain.

  “Cotton wool,” said Holmes approvingly. “You are the most pragmatic of women, Mrs Hudson, as well as the most forgiving.”

  “Why are you at my door anyway? What has occasioned this disruption?”

  “Nothing, my dear lady. Nothing you need concern yourself about. Return to your slumbers.”

  We left Mrs Hudson grumbling to herself and went back to our rooms. There was no sleep for either of us the rest of that night. I busied myself gathering up the dead animals in coal sacks and swabbing clean the patches of soot and bird blood in my room and the clots of rat innards in Holmes’s. Holmes, meanwhile, found occupation at his chemistry bench, where he dissected one specimen of each of the two kinds of creature.

  “Ah, yes,” he said at the conclusion of his gruesome study. “The stomach contents tell a story. Chemical analysis reveals that both this rat and this pigeon have been fed grain adulterated with some form of alkaloid. It’s a fairly safe bet that the same is true of their brethren.”

  “Alkaloid,” I said. “You mean a drug.”

  “I cannot determine the precise sort but it appears to be plant-derived and has distinct psychotropic properties. The dosage, for beasts so small, is high – high enough to warrant the unusually aggressive behaviour they exhibited. Neither rats nor pigeons are wont to attack humans unless provoked.”

  “In other words, somebody set loose drug-addled vermin on us.”

  “That would seem to be the case.”

  “Good grief.”

  “You, of course, played into our assailant’s hands by opening your window.”

  “I had to. How else was I to get the birds out?”

  “But our foe predicted the move,” said Holmes. “The first three pigeons he introduced down through the chimney were precursors. Once the window was open, he could release the rest of the flock, who would make straight to join their fellows.”

  “I managed to close the window in time, but they came on regardless. They were relentless.”

  “As were the rats. Once they had infiltrated the house by means of the plumbing, they went with single-minded determination to find the nearest potential victim. The fact of my bedroom being nearer the bathroom than yours decreed that that victim should be me. Count yourself lucky, Watson. Had our domestic geography been different, you might have had two sets of animal adversary to contend with.”

  It was some small blessing, I thought.

  * * *

  Come the morning Holmes sent for his gang of street Arabs, the Baker Street irregulars, and paid them a princely sum to take the sacks full of rodent and avian corpses for disposal.

  “Under no circumstances,” he admonished, “are you to think of selling the pigeons for food. Am I making myself quite clear? I know your ways. They and the rats are to be tossed into the Thames, or better yet, incinerated.”

  Naturally those young ragamuffins were curious about the combined infestation of rat and pigeon, and Holmes blamed it on the cut-and-cover excavations that were currently under way nearby for the building of the new Circle Line underground railway. The creatures’ various nests had been disturbed by the works and they had been seeking new refuges. 221B Baker Street had just so happened to lie in the path of two simultaneous mass exoduses.

  When the irregulars were gone, and while we were waiting for a glazier to come and repair my window, I asked Holmes if he had any inkling who might be behind the attack.

  “Put it this way, Watson. I do not think it a coincidence that we were targeted thus just hours after our meeting with the Fanthorpe brothers.”

  “I feared you might say that. You mean we are getting too close to the truth for comfort.”

  “I mean precisely that. We have been given notice. Someone would like us to know that they regard us as meddlers and are unhappy about it.”

  “The Fanthorpes, presumably. You predicted the possibility of retaliation.”

  “If not the Fanthorpes, then a person or persons in their employ. The rats and pigeons were a threat, Watson. Whoever made it, however, has failed to apprehend one thing about me. I do not take kindly to threats. I consider them provocations. In fact, I would go further than that and call them declarations of war.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ANOTHER KIND OF JUNGLE, ANOTHER KIND OF WILDLIFE

  Holmes resolved that we should call upon Quatermain at his camp in Victoria Park. “We have greater insight now into the secrets he has been withholding from us,” he said. “We have lit a few candles to dispel the darkness. It is high time he came clean and illuminated the shadowy corners remaining.”

  Upon opening the front door to leave, however, whom should we find standing upon the step directly outside but Quatermain himself. His hand was raised as though he had been just about to grasp the knocker.

  “Speak of the Devil,” said Holmes. “Allan Quatermain. The very man we were off to see. Bless you, you have saved us a cab fare.”

  “Holmes,” said Quatermain. “May we talk?”

  “I insist upon it. But not here. There is a glazier upstairs making merry with chisel and putty. Our privacy is not assured. Why don’t we go for a stroll and talk as we walk? The sun is shining, and it feels as though this may be one of the last few clement days of the year. There is that sense of irrevocable decline in the air.”

  As we strode off along the pavement three abreast, I enquired after the state of Quatermain’s arm.

  “It is fast improving, Doctor, and I thank you for your professional ministrations. Here is my card with my Yorkshire address. If you would be so good as to send your bill there…”

  “Good heavens, I should not dream of it! You saved our lives at Starkey’s warehouse. Treating you was the least I could do in return.”

  “You are too kind. Umslopogaas has been singing your praises every chance he gets, you know. You have made quite an impression upon him.”

  “As has he upon me. He is a sterling fello
w. Quite the soliloquist, too.”

  “Yes,” said Quatermain, sounding a touch rueful. “I understand he has been indiscreet and shared certain information which he perhaps ought to have kept to himself. It is to discuss that topic that I came to see the both of you.”

  “Rather than indiscreet,” said Holmes, “I think Umslopogaas felt that he was being a responsible friend. He wished us to understand what has motivated you to journey to London and embroil yourself in these curious proceedings. Your seemingly erratic and uncoordinated activities now make more sense.”

  “Erratic? Uncoordinated? Well, possibly. You must at least be able to see that there has been method in my madness.”

  “And more than a dash of madness in your method. You are, if you don’t mind my saying so, Quatermain, no detective. There is a signal lack of logical consistency in your modus operandi. Your plan, assuming you even have one, seems to be to either lie in wait or else ruffle feathers in the hope that one or the other will somehow, as if by magic, cause the truth to reveal itself. I have found the patient, forensic accumulation of knowledge a far more reliable system.”

  I refrained from commenting that “ruffling feathers” characterised what Holmes had done at Fanthorpe Overseas Ventures the previous day. He would no doubt have viewed the exercise as just one weapon in his arsenal of strategies, whereas Quatermain appeared to have few others.

  “I do not profess to be an intellectual, Holmes,” Quatermain said. “I am what I am, and I do what I do.”

  “Yet that which works when hunting upon the plains of Africa does not necessarily work in an urban context.”

  “A city is just another kind of jungle, and people just another kind of wildlife.”

  “A fair analogy,” said Holmes, “but not entirely accurate. You overlook the greater level of sophistication typically found in human actions. People may be driven by the same base impulses as animals – to eat, to nest, to procreate, to ascend in the social hierarchy – but they dress them up in sometimes very elaborate guises, to such an extent that they do not necessarily recognise them for what they are. The banker who enriches himself from interest rates and speculation sees figures mounting in his ledgers and the material possessions his wealth enables him to buy, but may not fully appreciate how these things cement his position at the top of the pecking order, how they make him lead dog in the pack. The same holds, at the opposite end of the scale, for the cracksman who steals jewellery from the safe at the banker’s house. Uppermost in his mind is not feeding himself or his family, even though that will be the by-product of the deed. What he is thinking about is outwitting the manufacturers of the safe and not getting caught in the act – the perverse thrill of larceny. We do not always consciously acknowledge that which compels us, and this makes us less predictable and easy to read than the game creatures you are wont to pursue.”

  “You might be surprised how wily some of those game creatures are,” said Quatermain. “I take your point all the same. There is a whole different dynamic at work here in so-called ‘civilisation’, and it is one in which I am obviously not as well versed as a man like yourself. I am humble enough to acknowledge as much. What say we forget whatever disharmony has arisen between us and try to cooperate from here on? Bygones?”

  “Agreed.” Holmes clasped Quatermain’s proffered hand. “Bygones. I believe we may achieve far more by putting our heads together than by butting them.”

  “Hear, hear,” I said, with feeling.

  “In that spirit,” Holmes continued, “perhaps we can begin right now with you telling us how you fared during your visit to the Fanthorpe headquarters.”

  “Oh, you know about that?” said Quatermain. “Well, it was a singularly unfruitful exercise. Those three brothers were as obdurate as can be.”

  “I found them similar.”

  “You’ve been to see them yourself?”

  “Fanthorpe’s mining interests link our two suspicious deaths, those of Inigo Niemand and of your son Harry. My sincerest condolences on the latter.”

  “Mine too,” I said. “Frightful shame, Quatermain. I feel for you.”

  Briefly Quatermain’s face darkened, and I could tell that he was touched by our commiseration even as grief, that unending wellspring of pain, brimmed up within him once more. My sympathy was heartfelt and had a very specific source. My elder brother had been dead for nearly a decade, and still the ache of loss throbbed, at times catching me unawares with its intensity. He had never been the most dependable or affectionate of individuals, yet he had been my brother, my last living kin, and I missed him sorely.

  “As for Niemand,” said Holmes, “I suspect you are aware that Inigo Niemand is not his true name. He is in fact called Bradford Wade.”

  Quatermain nodded sagely.

  I myself was taken aback. “How do you know that, Holmes?”

  “You will recall, Watson, how yesterday in the lobby of the Fanthorpe offices I took it upon myself to inspect the appointments diary upon the clerk’s desk. Amongst the entries dating back to early last week was one in the name Bradford Wade. Now tell me, what were the initials embroidered upon Inigo Niemand’s handkerchiefs?”

  “‘B.W.’,” I said.

  “Excellent!”

  “But there is no way you could be certain that the Bradford Wade who had a meeting with the Fanthorpes is the ‘B.W.’ of Niemand’s monogram. There must be any number of people with those initials in London. Hundreds of them. Thousands, even.”

  “Quite,” said Holmes, with that regal superciliousness which was perhaps his most taxing personality trait. “However, after you and I parted ways outside the coffeehouse, I took myself to Chancery Lane. To Serjeants’ Inn Hall, to be precise, better known as Companies House. There I availed myself of the register of companies and perused the list of principal employees currently under contract to Fanthorpe Overseas Ventures. Amongst them was a Mr Bradford Wade, whose job title was given as ‘itinerant site inspector’. Thus did an association which might be dismissed as flimsy harden into something firmer.”

  “How so?”

  “An ‘itinerant site inspector’ working for Fanthorpe would surely be a man who travelled abroad, visiting the company’s various mines and reporting back to the directors. Such a man would undoubtedly acquire a tan if he had lately been in the tropics or equatorial regions, where the vast majority of the Fanthorpe mines are located. The evidence pointing towards Inigo Niemand and Bradford Wade being one and the same person was starting to mount, especially if you take into account the African tribal fetish we saw at Niemand’s flat.”

  “The fetish which he could have picked up during a stopover on his way home from India.”

  “Yes, but then there is his choice of pseudonymous surname.”

  “Niemand, the German for ‘nobody’. How is that relevant?”

  “It happens to have the same meaning in Afrikaans as well. Afrikaans is, after all, a dialect of Dutch, which in turn is related to German. The word niemand is common to all three languages. So it is perfectly possible that Wade would have gained a cursory working knowledge of Afrikaans if he had spent time in South Africa. Based upon this connection and the fetish, I asked myself, what if Wade was never in India at all? What if that was a ruse and he had instead been in South Africa? From there is hardly a leap to make the conjecture that his most recent mine inspection was carried out in that country, perhaps even at Silasville.”

  “It is conceivable, I suppose.”

  “None of this would have occurred to me were it not for the fact that Inigo Niemand, with his self-abnegating surname and his handkerchiefs sporting their ‘B.W.’ monogram, was almost certainly living in hiding under an assumed identity. What earthly reason would a man have for doing that if he were not frightened for his life? And if Niemand was Wade, as I thought, it would be reasonable to infer that he had stumbled across something significant on his latest fact-finding mission abroad, something which had prompted him to hasten back to London and deliver a
report to his superiors in person, much as Umslopogaas did with the news of Harry Quatermain’s sad demise. The same something was so terrible, so potentially injurious to Wade’s own welfare, that he saw no alternative but to confine himself in a benighted quarter of west London, giving his landlady a false name and lying to her that he had been working for the Imperial Legislative Council in India and had returned to England in poor health. Am I wrong in any respect so far, Quatermain?”

  “Not a one,” came the reply.

  “Now, in light of Umslopogaas’s story about Harry, one might readily infer that Bradford Wade could have learned of that young man’s unaccounted-for death and discovered the truth about its circumstances. Thus have I been weaving a web of connections, and I hereby call upon you, Quatermain, to corroborate its substance.”

  We had by this time reached Hyde Park, whose network of pathways seemed as good a venue as any for us to continue conducting our ambulatory discourse.

  “Niemand was Wade, yes,” said Quatermain, “and I met him by happenstance outside the Fanthorpe building after I made my somewhat ignominious departure from the boardroom. He was entering by the front door as I was leaving, and I’m embarrassed to say that the encounter was physical. To wit, I barged into him when storming out and knocked him flat on his back. Quite by accident, of course. I was in high dudgeon and not looking where I was going.

  “I helped him to his feet, naturally, full of apology. He picked up the briefcase he had dropped, brushed himself down and gave me a glare.

  “I excused myself, muttering something about having just had to deal with some of the most unhelpful idiots the world had to offer, and Wade – although I did not yet know him by name – replied that if I was referring to the directors of Fanthorpe Overseas Ventures, it was an opinion I would be better off keeping to myself. He said this in such a way that it could have been taken as a company man asserting his loyalty to his employers, but I noted a distinct edge to the words.

  “That aroused my curiosity. Some inner prompting – I don’t know what it was – told me that here was a fellow who might be of advantage to me. My enquiries up until then had proved bootless. Could this stranger, who radiated a manifest anxiety, present the breakthrough I was looking for?