For several minutes, our knocking at the front door produced no response, and as we waited on the step I caught the distant sound of raised voices from deep within the house. At length, someone approached the door, and there came a voice, thin and querulous, from the other side.
“Who is it and what do you want?”
“It is your cousin, David,” Boldero called back, “and I wish to speak to you again about Simon.”
“I’ve already told you I know nothing about him. Why can’t you leave me in peace?”
“I know that Simon was here in January.”
“No, he wasn’t!”
“I found his muffler in the room I slept in.”
“If there was any muffler there, you put it there yourself!”
How long this exchange might have continued, it is hard to say, but Holmes had clearly heard enough.
“If you do not open this door at once,” said he in a masterful tone, “we shall put the matter in the hands of the police immediately.”
For a moment there was silence, then we heard the sound of a bolt being drawn and the door was opened. The man who stood back to let us enter was one of the oddest human beings I have ever seen. He was somewhat over middle height, but strangely hunched about the shoulders, so that his neck and head protruded forward like that of a tortoise. His chest and shoulders were very stocky, but the rest of him seemed to taper away almost to nothing, ending with a pair of very small feet.
“Come in, then, if you must,” said he in an impatient tone, waving his arms at us. As we did so, there came a terrific racket from somewhere upstairs, a woman’s voice, shouting raucously, and a violent banging noise, as if someone were kicking at a door. “It’s only the maid,” said Silas irritably. “She’s probably got herself locked in the broom cupboard again. I’ll deal with it in a minute.” He closed the front door behind us, and as he did so the noise upstairs subsided. “Thank goodness for that,” said he in an unpleasant tone.
“Now,” he continued, addressing David Boldero, his head protruding forward as he did so. “You wish to speak to me of your brother. It is true, I admit, that I saw him in January, but I had good reason for denying it, as you will understand shortly. The matter is more complex than you perhaps suppose. You had best all come this way, and I will explain everything.”
He opened a door at the right-hand side of the hall and led us into a dusty, unfurnished room. A penetrating smell of damp filled the air, and plaster had fallen from the walls in chunks and lay in crumbling heaps upon the bare boards of the floor. As I closed the door behind us, I thought I heard the woman shouting again upstairs.
“You will excuse the slight disarray,” Silas remarked over his shoulder, as he led the way to a door at the far side of the room. “This room is in need of a little redecoration. This will be the quickest way,” he continued, throwing open the door and passing through it.
We followed him along a narrow flagged corridor, which ran along the right-hand side of the house and appeared to have been added as a way of getting from the front of the building to the back without passing through the inside of the house. A row of dirty, smeared windows on our right looked out over the gardens, which were as Boldero had described them: a confused mass of overgrown shrubs and tangled creepers, upon which the rain now fell steadily.
At the end of the corridor was another door, with a small rectangular pane of glass set in it near the top. Silas Boldero glanced through this, then drew back a bolt and pulled the door open.
“Come on, come on!” he said impatiently. “Let’s get out of the cold!”
We filed through the narrow doorway after him into a long, high-roofed conservatory, built on to the back of the house. The air in here was much warmer, very moist, and had an odd, unpleasant smell to it. I was the last to enter, and as I did so it was clear that our host was becoming very irritable.
“Hurry up!” he cried, putting his hand on my shoulder as I passed him at the doorway. “Let’s get this door closed!”
“Look out!” cried Holmes, but his warning came a fraction of a second too late, for at that instant I received a violent push in the middle of the back, lost my balance and stumbled into the others. In that moment of confusion, Silas Boldero slipped back through the doorway, slammed the door shut behind him, and shot the bolt home. A moment later we heard his rapid footsteps ringing on the flagstones of the corridor. Above us the rain drummed heavily on the glass roof of the conservatory, so that we had to shout to make ourselves heard.
“What the devil is going on!” cried Boldero in an angry tone.
“We have been tricked,” said Holmes, his keen eyes darting round the strange structure in which we found ourselves. It had been built against the wall of the house, so that on our left was a tall blank wall of brick. Incongruously placed high up in this wall, directly above where we stood, but with no way of reaching it, was an ordinary-looking door.
“That must be the door through which I fell last night,” said Boldero, following my gaze. From the house wall, the roof of the conservatory sloped down steeply to a lower wall, on our right, which was composed entirely of glass panels. At the near end of this wall was a pair of doors of similar construction, which gave onto the garden. A quick examination showed that these doors were locked.
But though I quickly took in all these features of the building, it was the floor that arrested my attention. Where we stood it was composed of large square flagstones, moss-covered and slimy, which extended for about twenty feet. Beyond that, the floor sloped gently downwards, into what appeared to be a deep bathing pool, which extended for a further thirty or forty feet, to the far end of the building. The surface of the water was green-skimmed and unhealthy-looking, and covered with drifting vegetation and other debris. Even as I looked, however, I saw something moving there, a purposeful dark shape beneath the water.
“Holmes!” I cried, but he had already seen it and his keen face was rigid with tension. Whatever it was, it was moving up the pool towards us, its swift, gliding motion sending little ripples out as it approached. Then, above the slime on the surface of the water, I saw the front of its snout, two large nostrils dilated to suck in air, and, some way behind, two large, evil eyes, fixed steadily upon us.
“My God!” cried Boldero in terror. “What in Heaven’s name is it?”
“It appears to be an African crocodile,” responded Holmes quietly in a voice that was icy cold. “The largest and most deadly reptile on earth. It is a monster of the species, too: it looks a good eighteen feet in length.”
As we watched, the creature slowed and then stopped altogether, lying still in the water barely ten feet from the edge of the pool, its unblinking eyes watching our every movement. Whether this quiet observation represented mere curiosity or was the prelude to a sudden assault, it was impossible to tell.
Without turning his head, or taking his eyes from this awesome vision, Holmes reached into his pocket and drew out a pistol, which he passed to me, pressing it firmly into my hand. “It may be utterly useless against such a beast, but we have nothing else,” said he softly. “If it moves any closer, Watson, shoot to kill! Now, quickly, Boldero, help me! We must try to break down the doors!”
Behind us, on the flagstones, stood a low wooden bench. Holmes seized hold of one end, but Boldero had been struck rigid with fear at the sight of the terrible creature and did not move.
“Boldero!” cried Holmes again in an urgent tone. “For your life, man!”
At that moment there came a crash above us, as that singular door high up in the wall was flung open. Framed in the doorway stood Silas Boldero, and from his hand hung a large canvas sack. For a moment he looked down upon us in silence, a horrible sneering smile upon his face, then he laughed harshly and drew from the sack what appeared to be a large piece of raw meat. With a careless movement of his arm, he flung it out into the air, and it fell with a splash in the shallow edge of the pool. The creature in the water made no discernible movement, and yet
I had the disturbing impression that it had drifted very slightly nearer to where I stood.
The sudden appearance of his cousin at least had the effect of breaking the spell of fear that had held David Boldero motionless. Now he quickly bent his strength to the wooden bench that Holmes was lifting, and the two of them charged with it at the garden doors of the conservatory. With a terrific crash of breaking glass and a splintering of wood, the lock gave way, the doors flew open and the colder air of the garden rushed into the building. For a split second, as the doors were burst open, I had taken my eyes off the monster in the water, but now I saw, to my horror, that it was moving smoothly and swiftly forward, its long scaly tail thrashing the water behind it.
I raised the pistol, aimed between the creature’s eyes and fired. The bullet must have struck the top of its head and bounced harmlessly off the thick, armoured scales there, for it struck the brick wall with a ringing crack farther along the building.
“Watson!” came a shout from outside the shattered doors. “Leave it! Fly for your life!” But I could not. The creature was too close. In a moment it would be on top of me. Like something from an evil nightmare, it rose up out of the water before me, its huge red and grey mouth gaping open viciously, ready to crush me between its rows of colossal pointed teeth. I let off three shots in rapid succession as I backed away towards the door, at least two of which struck it in the throat. With a mighty splash, sending fountains of water up to the roof, it crashed down into the pool, but its wicked eyes were still fixed upon me as I backed out into the garden and turned to run.
Even as I did so, there came a cry of anger and a string of foul oaths from Silas Boldero. Glancing up, I saw that his face was contorted with rage, and he was stamping his foot in the doorway and shaking his fist at me, like a spoiled child whose plans have been thwarted. Behind him, in the gloom of the bedroom, there seemed some slight movement, and I thought I descried another, slighter figure, a woman clad in black; but I paid little heed, for I saw, too, that the crocodile was stirring once more. Clearly hurt by my shots, but not fatally so, it was beginning to rise out of the water once more.
I turned away, but I had not taken two paces when the shouting and foul language gave way all at once to a long shriek of terror. I turned quickly to see Silas Boldero tumbling headlong into the conservatory, his arms waving wildly and uselessly in the air. He hit the hard floor with a heavy thud, and lay perfectly still. Up above, in the open doorway, the woman in black looked down. Whether he had simply lost his footing in his agitation and slipped on the slimy edge of the doorway, or whether she had startled him, struck him, or even pushed him from the ledge deliberately, it was impossible to say. I had little time to consider the matter, however, for my attention at that moment was entirely directed at the crocodile. It was now out of the water, revealing its full gigantic length for the first time, and making its way towards the still figure of the recluse.
Holmes and Boldero were some way ahead of me, but had seen what had happened and ran back to join me outside the conservatory. It was clear, even at that distance, that Silas Boldero’s head and neck hung at a strange, unnatural angle, and that his eyes were wide open and unblinking.
“He’s dead,” cried Boldero. “We can do nothing for him now.”
Abruptly the crocodile lunged forward, its hideous mouth agape, seized hold of the crumpled body on the floor and made to drag it back into the water.
“Have you a round left, Watson?” said Holmes tersely.
I stepped forward and, from just outside the conservatory doorway, took careful aim and fired. The shot hit the monster in the side of the mouth and it stopped and loosed its grip on its terrible bundle. Then slowly, but with infinite menace, it turned its baleful eyes upon me.
“Quickly, Watson!” cried Holmes, tugging at my sleeve. “We can do no more here!”
We turned and ran, and as we did so there came a terrific crashing noise from behind us. I looked back in trepidation to see that the awesome creature was smashing its way through the remains of the conservatory doors as if they had been made of paper and card, and lumbering after us at a pace that both surprised and terrified me. Through the bushes we plunged, taking any route that seemed to offer a clear run, and dreading above all else running into a blind alley of vegetation, from which there would be no escape. Behind us, without pause, came the heavy padding of the monster, the constant crack and crash of broken branches as it forced its way through the undergrowth informing us that it was still upon our trail. All the time the rain lashed down remorselessly.
We must have run halfway round the grounds, in the direction of the road, when I saw Holmes stop a little way ahead of me and look in alarm at the path and the glass structure that covered it. We could neither pass it nor penetrate it, and could not, therefore, reach the gate.
“The wall!” he cried abruptly, and set off towards a section of the high wall that appeared to have lost much of its mortar, and which might thus offer the possibility of hand-holds. Then, just in front of me, Boldero put his foot into some small creature’s burrow and fell to the ground, crying out with pain. In a second, Holmes was back and had hold of his left arm. I took his right, and together we managed to get him to the foot of the wall. We could hear the crocodile close behind us now, smashing its way through the tangle of brambles near the wall.
In a trice, Holmes had shinned up the wall and was reaching down for Boldero’s hand, while I stayed at the bottom to help him up. I was still standing flat-footed on the ground as Boldero dragged himself onto the top of the wall when, with a deafening crash, the monster burst through the last of the undergrowth and thundered towards me.
“Your hand!” cried Holmes.
I thrust my arm up blindly, he seized it, and with quite extraordinary strength dragged me bodily up the wall. I swung my legs up onto the top just as the creature charged, its colossal, dripping mouth mere inches from my feet.
“You have saved my life!” I cried, panting with exhaustion.
“We have saved your foot, at any rate,” returned my friend in his customary dry manner.
“God’s mercy!” cried Boldero suddenly, in a voice suffused with terror. “It is climbing the wall!”
Indeed, incredible to see, it was raising itself up and clawing at the wall with its front feet, its fearsome snout almost reaching the top of the wall, where we stood. As one, the three of us sprang down into the road, Boldero crying out in pain as he landed on his twisted ankle.
“It will not get over that,” said Holmes, eyeing the wall as he dusted off the knees of his trousers. “Now we must make haste to notify the authorities of all that has occurred here.”
“The woman—” I began.
“Oh, ‘Mad Mary’ will be safe enough,” returned my friend. “When she leaves the house she will do so by the covered pathway from the front door, where the creature cannot get at her.”
After a moment to recover our breath, we set off at a brisk walk down the hill, through the pouring rain, and half an hour later, having described our experiences to an amazed and incredulous police inspector, we were sitting with a glass of brandy by the fire in the hotel. I was soaked to the skin and my clothes had been torn in several places during our flight through the garden, but the closeness of our escape from death had made me almost light-headed, so that such trivial matters seemed of no consequence. I believe the others were affected in the same way, for when Holmes spoke, there was a note of elation in his voice.
“Let me be the first to congratulate you upon at last coming into your inheritance!” said he, addressing David Boldero, who answered the remark with a rueful smile. “The circumstances may not have been ideal, I grant you, but they have a certain memorable quality! I am sure that Miss Underwood will be interested to hear of your adventures!”
“Beatrice!” cried Boldero abruptly, clutching his head. “I had quite forgotten! I am supposed to be dining with Beatrice and her parents this evening! I shall have to send a note to say I
cannot come.”
“No, no! You must go!” insisted Holmes, laughing. “This may be the one evening in your life when your late arrival for dinner will earn no disapproval! After all, it is not every prospective son-in-law who can honestly inform his fiancée’s parents that he was delayed by an enraged crocodile!”
The Adventure of
THE ENGLISH SCHOLAR
CONSIDERED SIMPLY as someone with whom to share chambers, my friend Sherlock Holmes could never have been described as ideal. An enthusiasm for conducting malodorous chemical experiments at all hours of the day and night is not, after all, the first quality one looks for in a fellow lodger. When not occupied in this or similarly unsavoury activities, he would often sit for hours in silent reflection, during which time he would do little save smoke enormous quantities of the strongest shag tobacco. Not infrequently, I would retire to my bed at night, leaving him busy with his chemical researches or simply engrossed in his own thoughts, only to find upon rising the following morning that he was in precisely the same position as I had left him the night before, the only difference being that the atmosphere of the room had deteriorated somewhat in the meantime. This was not, on the whole, conducive to a pleasant start to the day. No matter how good one’s breakfast may be, it is difficult to derive full pleasure from it when the air in the room is scarcely breathable.
Then there was his untidiness. In the early days of our shared tenancy in Baker Street, our chambers remained neat and uncluttered, and I could not have imagined then into what depths of disorder they would later descend, as towering piles of papers and documents accumulated in every corner of the room. It surprised me at first that a man so trim in his personal appearance and habits could allow his surroundings to degenerate in this way, but I soon came to understand the problem. When Holmes was engaged upon a case, his energies were devoted exclusively to its solution, and all other considerations were set aside. At the conclusion of a case he would fall at once into an exhausted lethargy, which might last for several days, during which time he would do nothing whatever, save move from one easy chair to another. Then, not infrequently, just as I had detected signs that his energies and spirits were recovering, and hope stirred within me that if I could dissuade him for a moment from his chemical researches he might at last address the confusion in our rooms, a new case would be brought to his attention and all other matters would once again be set aside. As his practice increased, and the time at his disposal between cases shrank accordingly, so did the condition of our rooms gradually deteriorate. But understanding the problem did not make it any the less bothersome. Once or twice I had offered to help put his papers in order, but he always rebuffed my offers, declaring that only he could arrange the papers how he wished them to be arranged.
The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes Page 24
