by Guy Adams
“Measles,” I replied, “otherwise known as ‘rubeola’. Now may I go in or do you wish to give me a physical examination first to make sure I haven’t got any?”
“No need to be like that, Doctor,” he replied, picking up his sandwich once more and offering up a particularly floppy corner to his wrinkled mouth. “We all have our role to play after all.”
And there he had a point—given how I had been bemoaning my involvement, how much worse would it have been to be this man? Sitting in doorways and knowing nothing but arguments and grumpy general practitioners. Still, he didn’t have to be such an unbearable prig about it.
I stepped inside to see the Science Club indulging in their usual chaos. Perry had fallen asleep amongst the book stacks, Cavor appeared to be trying to fold a rug into the shape of a typical paper dart, and Lindenbrook was drawing on the back of a bookshelf with some chalk. It seemed inconceivable to me that anything worthwhile could come out of such an obvious collection of lunatics. Later, Mycroft would admit that he paid the cleaner to gather all notes (copying those left on non-portable surfaces such as walls and floors) and hired a team of scientists to decipher their content. Apparently, by so doing, he has blueprints for an improved combustion engine, an entirely new number and the likely outcome of every single cricket match played at Lord’s cricket ground for the next three years—eclectic information, certainly, but groundbreaking nonetheless.
Of Challenger there was, irritatingly, no sign.
“Professor?” I called.
“Get down man!” came the man’s familiar roar and I dropped to the floor as a native spear passed through the space where I had just been standing and imbedded itself in the spine of Litefoot’s Lepidoptera volume three, E-G.
“I nearly had you then!” the professor laughed, bounding through the tables, another large spear in his hand. “I often find physical exercise keeps the brain firing!” he said, as if that was a perfectly adequate explanation. “I have been giving thought to the question of how waxing the feathers can improve the wind resistance.”
I might have suggested that he had enough to think about without branching out into the aerodynamics of pointed weaponry, but I was concerned he’d stab me with the other spear if I did. With Challenger no response was impossible. Instead, I brought him up to date with the investigation and extended Holmes’ offer for him to join us on the night’s mission.
“An expedition!” Challenger exclaimed. “What a splendid idea!” He leaned close. “And if nothing else it will get me away from these idiots!”
Looking over his shoulder, I could see that Cavor was climbing into his upholstered dart, looking for all the world as if he intended to try and fly it out of the building. Perry gave a loud snore, woke himself up and fell over in a cloud of tumbling books.
“I can see why that would appeal,” I said. “We’ll see you at Baker Street at eight, then?”
“I shall be there!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Stepping out onto Great Russell Street, I wondered quite what to do with myself. As far as I knew, Holmes was, at that very minute, poking through the evidence at the home of the man he knew to be “Moreau”. Given my absence, the last thing I fancied doing was returning to our rooms and waiting there like a dutiful wife.
I was furious, walking down the street, banging the paving stones with my cane. I would have given anything to have Holmes there, I would have given him a piece of my mind that even he, in his cold and logical way, would struggle to dismiss.
How dare he be so patronising! I would come to the same conclusion, and would feel more vindicated by coming to it under my own steam, would I?
Well, I dare say I could come to the same conclusion. As much as Holmes liked to paint me the idiot, it was a distinctly uncharitable impression. I might not have the same skills as he did, the same leaning towards deduction and the interpretation of data, but that didn’t make me a dullard. We had already decided that there was a limit to who could continue Moreau’s work, either the man himself or someone who had worked closely with him. From what Holmes had said then it was clear that he didn’t believe the culprit to be Moreau himself. That was logical enough. Even if we ignored Prendick’s statement that the man had been torn limb from limb he would be decrepit by now, and the rampaging pig-faced man did not sound like a fellow in his dotage. So we were left with the people who worked with him. Those who studied his methods well enough to be able to duplicate and continue them. So, Prendick or Montgomery, both of whom were also apparently dead, the former to the satisfaction of a police inspector whose opinion I had trusted enough to consider the matter a fact. So what about Montgomery, the drunk, the sometime employee of Mycroft’s Department?
As I walked I became increasingly unaware of my direction. I was simply marching the streets, powering my thoughts with the urgent pounding of my feet.
Ideas were flooding through my head, random words and phrases, mental images. I saw Prendick’s mad writing on the wall of his home: Fear the Law!—the phrase uttered by “Moreau” when wishing to bring his animal army under control at the Houses of Parliament; repeated by Moreau’s creatures on the island, according to Prendick’s manuscript. I thought of that single copy of The Times and the pile of copies of The Chronicle he had kept. That made me pause. I actually stopped stock-still in the street. It didn’t make sense. If he normally read The Chronicle then why had he received a copy of The Times? Had that been sent to him as a threat? Most likely. And what of the religious pamphlet with its bizarre quote? Was that relevant?
I took Prendick’s manuscript from my pocket and flicked through the last few pages. People had to veer around me, tutting and moaning at the distracted man who stood in the middle of the street reading sheets of paper. I barely noticed them as I skimmed through the climax of his report. I read of Moreau’s death and suddenly a piece of the jigsaw fell into place.
“‘Children of the Law,’” I read aloud, quoting Prendick’s words as he faced Moreau’s creatures after the man’s death. Prendick was scared of them, convinced that they would turn on him and Montgomery unless he persuaded them to stay true to the dead man’s principles, Moreau’s “religion”. “He is not dead,” Prendick had continued. “He has changed his shape—he has changed his body … For a time you will not see him. He is … there.” At this point in his account, Prendick describes how he pointed to the sky, suggesting Moreau’s elevation to the divine, “where he can watch you. You cannot see him. But he can see you.” Then that phrase again, “Fear the Law.”
These were familiar words of course, copied onto that religious pamphlet, along with the newspaper, the trigger that had driven Prendick to suicide.
But who had sent them? Montgomery? It must be—he was the only man left to have worked with Moreau.
And then it hit me, and those sheets of Prendick’s manuscript fluttered from my hands as I realised what I had been missing all along. Montgomery was not the only other man to have worked with Moreau. There was another. One who would have had easy access to Prendick’s statement when he had first returned from the South Pacific, who would have found it only too easy to trace him and send him a copy of a newspaper and a veiled threat. There was one man who had hidden in plain sight throughout the whole affair. Knowing it—and like Holmes has said in the past, even without proof I did know it, it was nothing less than a fact to me— the sense of unity that washed over my mind was incredible. For all his loathsome behaviour, Holmes had been quite right, in that to have come to the realisation myself was something that quite simply took my breath away. I knew who had been behind it all.
It was something of a surprise to find he was climbing out of a carriage and walking across the road towards me.
“Hello Doctor,” said Mitchell. “I’ve been hunting for you ever since my operatives told me you were leaving The British Museum.”
“You!” I said, still somewhat in shock, both at my own realisation of the identity of the new “Moreau” and the fac
t that he was now right here in front of me. “All that time you helped him, undercover, writing your story, all that time, damning him in public, ensuring he was hounded out of the country … all that time …”
“I was thinking what I might gain from such fascinating work, yes,” Mitchell said. “But here is not the place for such conversations.” He gestured towards the driver of the carriage, who stepped down and walked slowly towards us. His bowler hat was pulled low, a muffler covering most of his face. But when he came right up to me I found I was looking directly into the eyes of a cat. The driver tugged the muffler down slightly, enough to reveal the shiny black skin and snarling fangs of a panther.
“I have need of your company,” said Mitchell. “Please don’t be so stupid as to refuse. My friend here could take your head off with one swipe of his arm.”
I had no doubt this was true. No doubt this was the very beast that had so viciously savaged Fellowes’ security officer.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, as the driver took hold of my arm and pulled me towards the carriage.
“Oh, a little leverage,” said Mitchell, following behind us, “and a man can never have too many living specimens to work on.”
As I was yanked into the darkness of the carriage, he stepped in behind me, and his smile was as animalistic as any of his creations’. “Just you wait until you see what I can make of you!”
PART FIVE
INTO THE LION’S DEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I am only too aware that, having criticised Watson’s handling of my case notes, I am now in a decidedly precarious position. Though hardly so precarious as Watson, kidnapped from the street and at the mercy of a mad man and his terrifying menagerie.
As for whether I can satisfy his imaginary readers—of this, a case that will likely never be read—only time will tell. Certainly, I can do no worse. If his editor ever has cause to read it and is concerned that it is lacking in excitement I hereby give my permission for him to insert a superfluous boat chase or fist fight. I trust that what few intelligent readers my Boswell has left will have the good sense to skip such juvenilia and move straight on to the facts.
I must confess, the conclusion of the Moreau affair was somewhat tedious. From that point on it was little more than battles with inhumane monsters beneath the streets of London, none of the really interesting cerebral problems that feature in my better cases. Watson rarely talks about those, the affair of the Doomsday Book Murder for example, a conundrum solved entirely in repose on my chaise longue—fourteen hours of the most thrilling mental arithmetic, logical deduction and abstract contemplation. One day I shall write it up myself, as a beautifully cold and precise novel. It shall be the pinnacle account of my career.
But, for now, let us cover up our agonised boredom and talk of monsters and madmen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
But I dash ahead of myself (no doubt in apathetic determination to have the matter done). First there was the examination of Mitchell’s house.
I had no doubt that Watson would soon realise that Mitchell was our man. After all, it was by far the most obvious solution. While Moreau had published frequently he had obviously never put pen to paper on the subject of creating animal hybrids. Whoever the current perpetrator was, he clearly modelled himself after Moreau and yet wished to preserve his anonymity (the pig’s mask could have simply been Grand Guignol but I was willing to bet that it was a practical consideration too). Therefore we were after someone who was known to us who had had direct experience working with Moreau. Of the four people to match that description, three of them were dead. It was hardly a complex conclusion to reach.
But why? That question still stood. An answer to that and a possible clue as to the location of his laboratory (for only a fool would entirely pin their hopes on a vicious criminal with the head of a dog) drew me to investigate Mitchell’s home.
Mycroft commanded Fellowes to accompany me. This was somewhat irritating as the man insisted on talking despite having nothing more to say. Trying to think clearly next to such a source of endless noise is like trying to play the violin next to a dynamite explosion. It was a long and irksome journey.
“Here we are,” I announced in relief as we reached Mitchell’s home. Fellowes had been talking about his favourite music-hall tunes, a phrase I considered an oxymoron, so the timing couldn’t have been better, as I had spent the last few minutes in mortal fear that he might begin singing some of them.
The house was part of a small terrace, one of those dreary suburban properties that clog up our city, the sort of place clerks live.
“Mitchell will have long gone,” I said to Fellowes as we walked up the front path. “He will have left shortly after Watson’s visit. Knowing that we were investigating the matter he will have known we would return to his doorstep soon enough, only an idiot would sit and wait for such an eventuality.”
Fellowes reached for the door handle. “Will we need to force our way in?” he asked.
I put a hand on his arm. “Perhaps, but let us proceed with caution, it would not be beyond Mitchell’s skills to have left a trap for us.”
Fellowes tried the handle. “It’s not locked,” he said, pushing the door open gently.
I hooked my cane around his arm and pulled him back from the doorway. “All the more reason to assume there’s danger,” I insisted. “Mitchell is making it as easy as possible for us.”
Fellowes nodded. For all his verbal diarrhoea he was a professional when it came to security. “Stand well back then, Sir,” he said, “and keep out of the direct line of the doorway.”
I had already done as much, naturally. I once had a suspect prepare a catapult of broken glass behind his office door, determined to shred the face of his pursuer should they visit. Luckily for me he was as competent a layer of traps as he was an embezzler. Lestrade was left to pick up the pieces when the trap triggered early, spraying the inside of the room with its load.
The door opened and nothing came flying out at us.
Fellowes, still inclined to caution, inched towards the doorway and looked to the floor for signs of a tripwire.
“It’s dark in there,” he said, “but there is something …”
There was a loud hissing noise and Fellowes fell back, a viper darting at his face.
“Keep back!” I shouted, leaping forward and lashing out with my cane.
The serpent was not alone, a nest of them thrashed wildly just inside the door, mouths wide open, fangs bared.
“Something’s riled them,” said Fellowes, now standing at my shoulder. “They’re nervous things normally. Saw my fair share of them in India—the tail-end of one anyway, as it vanished into the brush.”
The snakes darted for the doorway, and Fellowes and I had no choice but to beat and stamp at them with our feet, better that than let them escape out into the street where they could bite some unfortunate passer-by.
“If we’d walked right in …” said Fellowes.
“Then we would have been bitten several times over,” I added.
I sniffed the air and noted a chemical tang I was familiar with. Looking at the door I could see a line of twine extending from the top of it to the door-jamb, then extending out into the gloom of the entrance hall.
Fellowes stepped inside, a lit match in his hands. “We need more light on the subject,” he announced, lighting the gas lamps.
“Careful!” I shouted, one last snake uncurling from the bracket of a wall sconce.
“Damn it!” he shouted, pulling back his hands in alarm. “Nearly had me then.”
He took my cane and tugged the snake from the light fitting. “Nasty little brutes,” he said as he brought his boot down on its head.
“Cottonmouth snakes,” I explained, “from North America. They are mean-spirited in their natural environment but these were encouraged. When you opened the door you pulled that string …” I said, pointing at where it was tacked along the wall. At the far end of the ha
llway stood a large wooden case, its trapdoor open and a glass beaker up-ended inside it. “The string tugged the trapdoor open which in turn tipped a beaker of what smells like formic acid onto the serpents.”
“No wonder they were in a bad mood.”
“‘No wonder,’ indeed. They would naturally have lashed out.”
“Aye,” said Fellowes looking at the dead snakes with some guilt, “them and me both.”
“It can’t be helped,” I said, cautiously opening another doorway off the hall.
“You sure you want to do that?” asked Fellowes. “Probably a pack of tigers in there.”
I opened the door. It led onto a small sitting room, with dusty chairs, an ill-kempt rug, and a long-cold fire grate. I estimated the room hadn’t been used for about fourteen weeks (give or take a few days). But then Mitchell was not likely to have entertained many guests.
“There is nothing here to interest us,” I said, and moved to the next door.
Opening this, I was faced with an entirely different sight. This had been Mitchell’s study, the room where he had met Watson.
“Check the other rooms,” I told Fellowes, to get him out from underneath my feet. “But be careful in case he has left any more specimens to greet us.”
“Righto,” he said, and began a slow circuit of the house.
Mitchell’s desk was virtually empty. A single sheet of paper was placed in its centre, like a portrait framed in a wide mount, to offer emphasis.
I picked the sheet of paper up, not entirely surprised to note that it was a letter addressed to me:
My dear Mr Holmes,
Sorry to have missed you but it was clear to me that if you were investigating it could only be a matter of time before you came knocking on my door. I flatter myself that I caused no suspicion in the mind of your colleague, Dr Watson, but am not so confident that I could manage the same with you. Your reputation is, after all, somewhat daunting.
