“Chin up,” Holmes said. My feelings must have been etched all too palpably on my face. “Neither you nor I will be a sacrificial goat here tonight. I swear it.”
Our little procession halted at the base of the Long Man. Mallinson directed his three co-conspirators to form a pattern around Holmes and me, with Jenks covering us from the side with his gun. Each of the four became the corner of a diamond, with Mallinson at the apex and us in the centre. Although they appeared to be equals in all respects, there was a clear hierarchy within this group. Mallinson was the ringleader, the dominant personality among them. The other three subtly deferred to him.
“Let us stand back-to-back,” Holmes said to me. “Face out and show them we are no cowards.”
With Holmes’s shoulder blades pressed against mine, I did my best to put on a brave front.
“Gentlemen,” Mallinson said. “We come to the fulfilment of our design, the culmination of great hard work and considerable personal loss. We have done so much, given so much. We four, who are in positions of unparalleled privilege and power, stand ready now to reap the rewards.”
Some acoustical trick of the landscape lent his words a strange sonorousness, as though he were speaking in a cavern, his voice amplified and echoing.
“We are here tonight to call on gods,” he continued. “Old gods. Neglected gods. Gods whose priests and worshippers are long since dead. Gods who were once appealed to in times of dire need to lend mortals strength and courage.
“Gods of war.
“In this place where a giant died in conflict, where the very earth is infused with his spilled blood, we call on the ancient deities who were once synonymous with the clash of arms and the inflicting of death.”
Mallinson held up his onyx Egyptian eye.
“I myself call on Horus, falcon-headed god of the sky, who was charged by his mother Isis with defending the people of Egypt from evil and who was habitually invoked when the pharaoh’s troops marched to war. I bear his symbol, the hieroglyphic eye, which represents wrath. To him I have given my one and only son, in tribute.”
He turned to Partlin-Gray.
“Whom do you call on, Josiah? Name your chosen god.”
“I call on Thor,” said Partlin-Gray. “Thor the thunderer, god of storms and protection, slayer of frost giants and dragons. Thor who wielded the hammer Mjölnir and to whom all Viking warriors would pray before entering the fray. I bear his symbol, the swastika rune, which represents lightning. To him I have given my wife, in tribute.”
“And you, Victor?” said Mallinson. “Whom do you call on?”
“I call on Ares,” said Anstruther. “Ares the Olympian, the destroyer, the slaughterer, the bane of enemy troops. Ares who was beloved by the Spartans, the greatest warrior race that ever lived. I bear his symbol, the Corinthian war helmet, which represents martial prowess. To him I have given my brother, in tribute.”
“And you, Eustace?”
“I call on Huitzilopochtli,” said Harington. “Huitzilopochtli, Aztec sun god, hater of darkness, who shone so brightly in heaven that the souls of dead warriors had to use their shields to protect their eyes against his light. Huitzilopochtli, who was born from his mother Coatlicue’s womb clad in full battle armour to defend her from her rebellious demon offspring. I bear his symbol, the hummingbird, which represents swiftness, vigour and penetrative power. To him I have given my father, in tribute.”
As the four intoned these utterances, I found myself lapsing into a kind of appalled disbelief. Could they not hear themselves? Were they oblivious to how preposterous, how deranged they sounded?
Yet there was nothing but solemnity on their faces as each importuned his respective pagan god – that and a terrible firmness of purpose which some might take as sanity and some as sanity’s opposite.
“O you four war gods,” said Mallinson, “Horus, Thor, Ares, Huitzilopochtli, heed us now. We stand on the brink of a great conflict. Military forces are gathering overseas. England’s foes conspire and arm themselves. All is as we desire. We beseech you to ensure that that which is looming on the horizon assuredly comes to pass. We call on you to guarantee the arrival of war, which you love and is your reason for being.
“This past year we have sacrificed to you, as few else have done in recent times. We have surrendered up the lives of family, our own flesh and blood. We have given you our near kin, and you have responded as we wish, by influencing the minds of men so that the drums of battle now beat louder and clearer than ever and the outbreak of hostilities is inevitable. You have answered our prayers by paving the way for a war that will be like no other war in history, a war of wars, a world war. For this we thank you with all our hearts.
“Tonight was intended merely to be a restatement of our desires, as we hold your totems in our hands and formally show gratitude for your kindness.
“But now, in one final act of sacrifice, we offer you a man whom many regard as our nation’s greatest hero. With his intellect he has seen off countless plots to undermine England in the past, foiling the machinations of spies, traitors, seditionaries and saboteurs. He has been one of our country’s most loyal and indefatigable servants, a stalwart soldier in the struggle against evil.
“We each have presented you with a loved one, as a token of our devotion and obeisance. Now, we all four together present you with this man, this prize, this trophy, Sherlock Holmes, to die in your names.”
My anxiety deepened into terror, and I perceived that the usually unflappable Holmes was himself unnerved, for I could feel him shivering behind me.
My companion’s voice, however, was even, and his tone phlegmatic, as he said, “How terribly flattering, Mallinson. I see I am to be thrown into the pot, along with your relatives, to add savour to this blasphemous stew you have cooked up. How awfully convenient, too. The man who has rumbled your plans now becomes a part of them, in order to silence him. What will your gods make of that? Do you think they’ll be truly pleased that you’re offering me to them only because it gets you out of an awkward spot? I imagine that sort of behaviour might annoy them, rather than commend you to them.”
After the briefest of hesitations, Mallinson said, “They know we are sincere. They will sympathise. Gods of war understand the necessity of succeeding at all costs.”
Holmes’s shivering seemed to be intensifying. Yet he kept talking. “Anything is permissible in order to secure victory, is that what you’re saying? The end always justifies the means?”
“Anything and everything. For what it’s worth, I regret that things have come to this pass, Mr Holmes. You are an exemplary man. I admire you. At this moment, however, you are needed dead more than you are needed alive.”
“How galling, though, to die in such an inconsequential manner, as some piece in an abstract, metaphysical jigsaw puzzle assembled by madmen.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Craig,” Partlin-Gray snapped. “Must we take all night over this? Get on with the ritual, so that we don’t have to listen to any more of the fellow’s pestilential prattling.”
“Hit a nerve, have I, Sir Josiah?” said Holmes. “You yourself have the sneaking suspicion that, beneath it all, this is mere tomfoolery. You don’t believe that ancient gods have answered your prayers by fomenting war in Europe. It is quite absurd to think that the turmoil we are seeing on the continent is anything but the consequence of political posturing and the desire for territorial gain. Why should ancient gods be involved at all, when men are quite ready to start slaughtering one another regardless.”
“We have remembered them,” Mallinson butted in before Partlin-Gray could reply. “We have sacrificed to them, shown fealty to them, when no one else has in centuries. Our faith has stirred them from oblivion and brought them back to life, and they owe us for that. They are paying off their debt.”
“So worshipping gods is like a business transaction?” said Holmes. “Quid pro quo? ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’? I’m no churchgoer, but I don’t think that is h
ow religion works.”
“Perhaps not modern Christianity, but the older faiths? That’s exactly how they work. Bargaining. Propitiation. Gifts in exchange for favours. An admirably straightforward system, much like signing a contract.”
“Craig…” said an impatient Partlin-Gray. “He doesn’t need to be told all this. Just get to the point. The hour is late, and I’m cold and damp.”
The other two muttered in agreement.
“Very well.” Mallinson readjusted his grip on the dagger. “Jenks? I think Dr Watson should go first. Mr Holmes has delayed us enough. His reward for dragging the proceedings out is that he can wait a little longer for his own death. Dr Watson, anyway, is supernumerary. He needs to die only because we cannot allow him to live.”
Jenks shouldered his shotgun and moved towards us purposefully.
“Delayed you?” said Holmes. All at once he ceased shivering. “Yes, I have. Just enough.”
Jenks reached out to grab me. He, obviously, would hold me down while Mallinson applied the dagger.
I braced myself, tensing. I would not go quietly.
Then Jenks recoiled. Something protruded from his abdomen. It looked like the hilt of Holmes’s jack-knife.
“Oh you…” he groaned, and crumpled to his knees, then keeled over onto his side.
Blood was seeping out around the knife, staining his shirtfront. Instinctively, in his pain and confusion, he moved his hands to the weapon in order to extricate it.
“No,” said Holmes. “Don’t do that.” His arms were suddenly liberated from their bonds. Lengths of window cord slipped from his wrists to the ground, showing ends that had been roughly severed.
Jenks frowned up at him in befuddlement.
“I have stabbed you in the mesenteric cavity,” Holmes said, “in such a way that I believe I have missed the vital organs. The knife is acting as a kind of plug, helping to staunch the blood flow. Pull it out and you risk bleeding to death. Is that not so, Watson?”
I nodded. “With immediate proper treatment, you may survive. Be thankful that my friend has shown you more mercy than you would ever have shown us.”
“I, on the other hand, will show you none,” said Mallinson, and he lunged at us with the ornamental dagger raised.
Holmes kicked out, catching him with his toecap on the shin, just below the knee. Mallinson crumpled to the ground, grimacing in pain.
Next instant, my friend seized me by the elbow and we fled.
The three other plutocrats were too astonished by this sudden reversal of fortunes to act straight away. They could not fathom how Holmes had slipped his bonds and delivered Jenks a crippling injury, then felled Mallinson.
As for me, I scarcely cared at that moment how we were free, just that we were free. Later, I would piece the chain of events together, and Holmes would confirm my deductions.
Holmes, it transpired, had spotted the jack-knife in my jacket pocket. A telltale bulge had alerted him to its presence. When nudging me in the ribs during the car journey, he had taken the opportunity to pluck out the knife surreptitiously and palm it, right before the unsuspecting eyes of Jenks, whom he had been needling in order to fluster him and keep him distracted. While Holmes and I were standing back-to-back at the Long Man, he had opened the knife and used it to saw through the cord around his wrists. What I had taken for shivering was the action of cutting. Since the knife had lain between us, hidden from view, none of the others present had seen a thing. Holmes’s debate with Mallinson had been merely patter, misdirection, while he performed the trick of liberating himself, which he had followed with the somewhat less subtle trick of plunging the knife into Jenks’s belly. It seemed that the matter of our escape had been, as he had asserted, “in hand” – quite literally.
We charged downhill, pell-mell. It is no mean feat, running with one’s hands tied behind one’s back. Without my arms swinging to serve as a counterbalance, I felt as though I could fall over at every step. Fortunately Holmes was there to support me with a steadying hand.
Just as we gained the five-bar gate, the shotgun boomed behind us. We both ducked instinctively. Pellets splintered the gatepost.
Anstruther, with his hood thrown back, took more careful aim. He owned a hunting lodge. He was a skilled gunman. He wouldn’t miss a second time.
Holmes shoved me through the gate ahead of him, then dived after. The shotgun went off again, and I heard my friend gasp.
“Holmes!”
“I am hit,” he said with a hiss. “Just winged. It is not too bad. Now go. Go!”
We sprinted to the cars. There was no time for Holmes to cut me loose, nor any sharp implement available to do it with. Holmes clambered into the driving seat of the Mercury Thunderbolt; I took the passenger seat.
“You know how to drive?” I asked.
“Not as such,” he replied. “But I know the theory, and I watched Anstruther. I can replicate what he did.”
After two failed attempts, he got the car started. He stamped on the clutch and shifted the gear lever. The Thunderbolt jerked forward, then shuddered to a halt.
Holmes tried again. I noticed blood dripping from his left hand. His coat sleeve was shredded at the cuff. Anstruther may only have “winged” him, but the injury looked severe nonetheless. He could barely use the arm, not without great discomfort.
The car vibrated into life again, and Holmes pulled away from the roadside. There were shouts and cries from the field. The four plutocrats were almost at the gate. I glanced back and saw that Anstruther had appropriated not only Jenks’s shotgun but the pouch in which the spare shells were kept. This was not good news for us.
Mallinson, hobbling somewhat, got behind the controls of the Humberette. His colleagues leapt into the other seats. With much greater finesse and dexterity than Holmes, he started the car up. It roared down the road after us.
The chase was on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
FLIGHT IN A THUNDERBOLT
Anstruther’s Mercury Thunderbolt was the faster and more powerful of the two vehicles, but Mallinson was the better driver. He had experience and expertise where Holmes had none. He also did not have shotgun pellets embedded in his flesh, hampering his movements.
Holmes drove like the wind, careering along the narrow road with an urgency that bordered on recklessness. The mist, not yet fully gone, was at its thickest where it lingered in dips and hollows in the landscape. At times we were plunging through a whiteness so dense we could scarcely see the road. More than once the Thunderbolt’s wheels struck the verge on one side or the other and the car shimmied crazily. Holmes fought to maintain control, grappling with the steering wheel as though he had a bull by the horns and were trying to wrestle it into submission. The wheel’s wooden rim was slick with blood from his hand.
Despite his best efforts, however, Mallinson was gaining on us in the Humberette. Worse, Anstruther was upright in the back of that car, with the shotgun raised.
“Holmes…” I said.
“I know. I had thought a gravely injured manservant might detain them for a moment or two and give us a decent head-start. I was wrong.”
There was a blast, and the wing mirror on Holmes’s side disintegrated.
“Hold on tight,” he said, and threw the Thunderbolt into a slaloming manoeuvre so as to present a more difficult target.
I was hurled about from side to side in the passenger seat. It was all very well for Holmes to tell me to hold on tight, but how could I with my hands still tied behind me?
A second shot from Anstruther put a starred hole in the windshield.
“The man has little respect for his own automobile,” Holmes commented.
“Why should he care?” I said. “He makes them. He can always manufacture himself another.”
We reached an incline, and Holmes shifted down a gear in order to compensate. He mistimed the change slightly, and for a heart-stopping moment the Thunderbolt’s engine spluttered and the car slowed. My friend hit the accelerator
pedal hard. The car bucked, there was a ferocious roar, and all at once we were racing forwards again, at speed.
Back in the Humberette, Anstruther was on his feet once more, having reloaded the gun. He was braced against the car’s rocking motion, while Partlin-Gray, who was in the back seat beside him, helped steady him by gripping his waist tightly.
Anstruther closed one eye and took aim. The gap between the cars now stood at a little over a dozen yards.
“Prepare yourself, Watson.”
“For what?”
“This.”
Holmes stamped on the brake, and the Thunderbolt came to a screeching, juddering halt. The Humberette rammed into us a split second later, Mallinson unable to stop in time. Anstruther lurched forwards, and the gun discharged. The flash lit up the interior of the Humberette like a camera bulb, and we heard a shrill scream.
It came from Lord Harington, who had taken the shotgun round at point-blank range in his back.
He continued to wail in abject agony even as Holmes reengaged gear and pulled away.
Mallinson, with a furious growl, restarted the Humberette, which had stalled. In no time he was hot on our tail again. I saw Harington writhing in the seat beside him, making spastic efforts to clutch his back and somehow stem the bleeding. I could imagine the size and raggedness of the entry wound. Unless he was very lucky, it would prove a fatal one. Mallinson, however, appeared unbothered by his friend’s injury. The same went for Anstruther and Partlin-Gray. They were hell-bent on ending this chase and eliminating Holmes and myself, to the exclusion of all other concerns.
The shotgun blew away a section of the Thunderbolt’s coachwork. Shards of wood and metal sprayed over us.
The car itself was not co-operating as it had before. When the Humberette had shunted into it from behind, something in the chassis had either snapped or been twisted out of true. Holmes was having to struggle hard to keep us going in a straight line. We kept veering to the left. From below, a nasty grinding sound was growing louder and more insistent.
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