by Barry Day
Holmes raised his lantern above his head.
“Up there!” he cried over the din.
As I followed his pointing finger, I could now see a series of pipes running parallel to the flood and a few feet higher. Some few yards upstream was another of the metal landings. Several steps led up to it and it was enclosed with a handrail.
“Presumably that is the inspection platform,” said Holmes. “I assume that is where the water supply is routinely tested. I suggest we take a closer look.”
“If it’s all the same to you, gentlemen, I think I’ll look from here.”
Wilde was looking decidedly green, as far as once could tell in the flickering light of the lanterns. And, indeed, the air in the cavern was far from pleasant.
“I think I may have just discovered,” he added weakly, “that I suffer from both vertigo and claustrophobia. Regard me as waiting in the wings and listening for my cue.”
Holmes and I continued our descent until we set foot on the path and began to move carefully towards the inspection platform. The path itself was no more than eighteen inches wide and below us was “Alph, the sacred river” or—as it seemed to me—London’s equivalent of the Styx.
We soon reached the platform and Holmes was on it in a trice. I could see him examining an array of valves, levers and hatches and then he turned in my direction.
“Good news, old fellow. According to Mycroft, these stations are examined quarterly. This machinery has had time to gather dust and no one has disturbed it recently. Cain has not been here yet.”
“Thank heaven we are in time,” I said, breathing a distinct sight of relief.
Then I saw Holmes look over my shoulder and gaze upstream. The light from the lantern was reflected from an expression I knew so well. Half tense, half excited, it was the look that invariably came over him when an affair was reaching its crisis.
“Yes, Watson, we are in time—but for what, I wonder?”
I turned to follow his gaze and there, where the river curved before coming to meet us, I distinctly saw the reflection of light on the ceiling of the tunnel. We were no longer the only denizens of this hellish terrain. It was a scene from Dante’s Inferno.
“Quick, Watson, I seem to remember we passed a small embrasure some few yards back …”
A few moments later we were hidden in a shallow space beside a pile of equipment, on the purpose of which I did not even wish to speculate. Fortunately, our lanterns were of the ‘dark’ variety and we were able to cover the flames, so that they would not give away our presence.
By this time the light on the roof of the cavern was growing steadily brighter and then … around the bend towards us came a small boat!
It was a small skiff being rowed by one of Cain’s men in black. His back was naturally towards us but over his shoulder, seated in the stern was Janus Cain—and Irene Adler.
Irene was still wearing her male attire but her blonde hair was flowing free around her face. It was clear from the way she was sitting, with Cain’s arm loosely draped around her shoulder, that her hands at least were bound.
If she was frightened, it did not show. Rather, her jaw was set in anger and frustration and her eyes flashed fury. I reflected that Cain was wise to protect himself from the hands of any woman in this mood, let alone a woman of Irene’s strength of purpose.
Now the boat bumped against the side and I could see the oarsman slip a rope through an iron ring embedded in the stone. This was obviously the way the sewer workers transported their heavier equipment.
As he steadied the boat, Cain stepped catlike on to the path and pulled an unwilling Irene up beside him.
“Thank God the swine hasn’t hurt her,” I whispered in Holmes’s ear.
And then Cain did the last thing I could have expected …
He spoke to us.
“Good evening, Sherlock Holmes. For I have no doubt you are there in the gloom. When those predictable policemen broke into the Church, I assumed that you had divined my purpose. Too late, alas, as you were last time. Nonetheless, I must mark you top of the class. Why don’t you come out into the light where we can see one another?”
As Cain spoke, he was maneouvring himself up the steps and on to the inspection platform, pulling a reluctant Irene with him and using her body as a shield.
“I shall be glad to join you, Cain,” Holmes called back, bending to adjust the flame in the lantern. “It is only fitting this thing should end with just the two uf us.”
Then to me in the softest undertones.
“Stay where you are, old fellow. I assume you have …?”
“You may depend on it Holmes.” It is a long time since I have accompanied him on an adventure such as this without my trusty service revolver. As we have often discovered, an Eley’s No. 2 is an excellent argument in any situation.
With that, Holmes raised his lantern above his head and stepped out into the light.
Cain seemed a trifle surprised.
“So the Forces of Good are dispersed this evening, doubtless waiting in the wrong place, as usual? Ah well, it is of little matter. My own contribution will more than suffice to set the process in train …”
At this he took from an inner pocket one of the phials that Holmes had abstracted earlier from the Whitechapel laboratory. Without ever quite taking his eye off Holmes, he looked at it almost lovingly.
“May I introduce you to Pestilence—the First Horseman … or perhaps, in the light of our present circumstances, I should say, Boatman … of the New Apocalypse. This will give the deluded citizens of that Sodom and Gomorrah you call London a taste—if you will pardon my jest—of what my God has in store for them.
“Where Pestilence goes …”—and now his voice was rising in pitch—“Death will follow. As the populace dies, those that are left will revert to their primitive state and fight over such tainted food as they can find. That will bring Famine and War and, yet again, Death.”
“And what of you and your followers?” Holmes was humouring the man or buying time—or both. “How will you escape the Four Horsemen?”
“My followers …?” Cain sounded almost wistful. “Sadly, they no longer will be among the chosen few to be saved. In the Church I had made provision for them but you and your cohorts—with your impertinent intrusion—have condemned them to share your fate. Since the Lord has made me all-seeing, I have, of course, prepared an alternative contingency that will suffice for my lady and myself. We shall immure ourselves in a degree of luxury until the holocaust is past and we can re-emerge to take up our rightful place on the throne of a new order …”
“But it was Irene who betrayed you, Daintry. She is unworthy to sit at your right hand.”
For a moment I was shocked, until I realised Holmes’s tactic. He was deliberately splintering the man’s delusion at his moment of greatest stress. Was he Daintry or Cain. Was Irene Adler his idol or his enemy? Even in the dim light I could see the jumble of emotions contort his face, as he struggled for control.
“Irene!” he cried in the voice of one who has lost his dearest possession. The sound echoed up and down that dank space.
“No, never Irene. Violetta, perhaps. Or Senta. Or that boy, Ned you sent to spy on me. Or someone else. But never Irene … I have known for years that she was my destiny … No, stay precisely where you are …”
Holmes had slowly moved a few paces closer to the couple and it was this that broke the spell. A look of animal cunning replaced the abstract expression on Cain’s face and he pulled Irene closer to him.
“You are a clever fiend, Sherlock Holmes, but not clever enough. Nothing must stand in the way of God’s Purpose—not even Irene. But, unless you choose to act foolishly, it will not come to that. I have one small task to accomplish and then we shall be on our way. Irene will come to understand and share that Purpose. Incidentally, you will both see and observe that my loyal assistant, Sugarman has his pistol trained on you. Now, if you will excuse me one moment …”
C
ain pulled Irene awkwardly towards the control panel. Clearly, he had familiarised himself with the way things worked and I had visions of him alone down here at dead of night poring over the various dials and taps. If so, he had never had to practice with a determined woman to control.
As he reached out one arm and opened a valve, he held on to Irene with the other—the one that held the phial. Then everything happened in a blur …
With her hands tied behind her back, Irene did what only a woman would think of doing. She bent forward towards the restraining arm—and bit it!
Cain’s reaction was purely instinctive. He gave a cry of pain, his arm jerked up and away from his body … and the lethal phial flew up and up into the air, turning and twisting as it went.
Then I heard Holmes shout—“Now, Watson!”—and I saw that Sugarman had his pistol raised to fire. In that split second all the events of the last few days … all the horror of those old cold-blooded killings of helpless women … the danger Irene had undergone and the bravery she had shown … the sheer callousness—no, the evil—that was Cain … all of this flashed through my mind, as I stepped out of the shadow with my revolver cocked. To me that black figure in the boat might as well have been an Afghan tribesman at Maiwand. He was simply the enemy.
I have never shot better in my life. The bullet took him in the shoulder. His gun dropped from his paralysed fingers into the depths and he sank to the bottom of the boat.
Only then did I remember the phial. We had saved the water supply but heaven knew what would happen if that hell brew further contaminated the sewers.
I looked up and saw it relentlessly descending, catching the fitful light on its glass surface as it did so.
And then a hand plucked it out of thin air and held it aloft like Arthur brandishing Excalibur.
“I rather regret that I am too old to play cricket for England,” said Oscar Wilde. “I remember when I was up at Oxford watching them practise in the Parks. There was one bowler whose left leg was a Greek poem …”
I turned my attention back to the rest of the scenario, where several things seemed to happen at once.
Sugarman had clearly not tied up the boat too securely—or perhaps he had been in the process of untying it, ready for departure when my bullet struck him. In any event the painter had worked itself loose and Cain’s means of escape was drifting steadily away from the bank.
For the moment it took all his attention. Seeing him distracted, Holmes closed the intervening gap and snatched Irene from the platform.
“Watson!” he cried urgently, and in no time I was beside them and leading her to safety.
Seeing what had happened, Cain gave a scream of frustration such as I have never heard from a human throat. Then I saw his face. The black eyes were like two holes leading straight to Hell and the man was smiling—if one could call something so feral a smile. The lips were drawn back from the teeth and the skin was taut on his skull. I was looking at a living death’s head.
He stood on the platform looking down at the man who had finally thwarted all his plans. Then he threw himself down at Holmes.
Silently they wrestled on the brink of this infernal maelstrom. I had not realised how fast it was flowing until I saw how far the boat had already drifted. It was now well out of reach. Nor had I realised quite how many currents and eddies disturbed its oily surface.
Another vision came to me as the two men struggled for supremacy.
It was an encounter I had not witnessed but which I had played through in my mind more times than I cared to recall. It was of Holmes and Moriarty locked in deadly embrace on a mountain path, while the deadly Reichenbach Falls seethed below, waiting to claim either or both of them.
To and fro they struggled, evenly matched, neither giving an inch.
And then my heart almost stopped, for Cain managed to wrench one hand free and pulled something from his pocket that caught the light. It was an open razor.
The sight of it had quite the opposite effect on Holmes than his opponent can have expected.
“It seems that your God has deserted you after all and you are once again the same pathetic creature you were when you butchered those lost souls all those years ago. Then your peers saw fit to let you go free and undoubtedly would again to save their own faces. But I am not your peer, Daintry. You sent those women to meet their Maker. I think it is now time for you to meet yours …”
And with a lightning move learned from baritsu, Holmes hooked his foot behind Cain’s leg and threw his whole weight against it.
Without even a cry Cain dropped headfirst into the torrent hitting it like a dead weight. He did not appear again. In falling, he must have impaled himself on his razor, for a bright ribbon of blood floated to the surface and extended like a painter’s first tentative brush stroke. Beyond it all that was to be seen was the boat floating aimlessly, until it disappeared around the next bend.
Chapter Seventeen
It was well past midnight and we were once again sitting in the Café Royal.
Our reappearance from the depths of Trafalgar Square had caused, if possible, even more of a stir than our entry. Two dishevelled men leading a girl dressed as a boy and the unmistakable figure of Oscar Wilde proudly brandishing a test tube was not an everyday sight.
Once safely back on the surface, however, the rest of us seemed to succumb to a sense of anti-climax—but not Wilde. Here was a drama that—yes, he had to admit it—rivalled anything even he had so far conceived. Champagne was called for, vintage champagne, and he would provide it.
The Café Royal was close by and did not turn a hair as one of their best customers arrive with his motley band. A private room was provided and, by that alchemy only the finest establishments can achieve, the necessary toilet items were procured to enable Irene to effect a re-transformation to the beautiful woman who belonged in such a setting.
Before leaving Trafalgar Square Holmes had dispatched one of the constables to Whitechapel and before long the door of the room opened to admit both Mycroft and Lestrade, looking as much the worse for wear as we felt.
Bone weary but essentially happy, we raised our glasses—filled with Wilde’s excellent champagne—in a silent toast. Precisely what we were toasting I am not quite sure. To the continuance of life as we know it, perhaps. To the fact that the millions sleeping peacefully all over London would never know how close they had come to Armageddon.
Holmes, as ever, was anxious to tie up loose ends. Having briefly narrated our own adventures, he urged Lestrade to tell us what had transpired at Whitechapel.
“Oh, I think we can safely say that everything there is now tickety-boo, Mr. ’Olmes. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure they knew the game was up even before we broke in. Apart from the workers, there was hardly anybody left there. Those fellers in black had made a run for it. I couldn’t understand it at first because we’d had the place surrounded all day and made our presence known. But when Mr. Mycroft arrived, then the penny dropped, so to speak. They must have nipped through the sewers, too. Good luck to them, say I.
“We’d been on top of the problem all the time—if you’ll pardon the pun. All the stuff that had vanished was in the cellars and those had been bricked over. I say ‘was’, because it’s now under lock and key at the Yard. Enough to start a small war there …”
“Which was precisely what Cain had in mind,” Holmes interjected bleakly. “And what about the chemicals?”
“Got all those, too. Though we nearly had a little accident there. When I told young McLinsky what we were dealing with, do you know what he said?”
“Enlighten us, Lestrade,” I said, knowing we should hear anyway.
“‘Shall I pour it down the drain, Inspector?’”
Even though we had all heard more humorous stories, the laughter in the room served as a vent for our feelings.
When it had died down, Mycroft got to his feet and raised his glass.
“I think I may say that we have tonight concluded a
n episode which may never find a place in the official history books but which will, nonetheless, prove to have played a part in safeguarding the future of this island race. On behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, gentlemen—and lady—I thank you!”
And then an unfamiliar Oscar Wilde responded.
Although the foppish dress remained, the manner was gone. His eyes were bright and his voice low, as he said—
“I find sincerity a little frightening, I must confess. Which, I suppose, is why I take such pains to hide from it in public. I am tempted to say that tonight proves the importance of being Oscar—but for once I shall resist temptation. In these last few days I have witnessed loyalty, courage and every kind of love …” Did I sense his eyes linger on Holmes and Irene?—“It has made me feel humble. And may I tell you something …? I like the feeling … in small doses!”
Then it was as if everything that was to be said had been said. Gradually the room emptied. Lestrade buttoned officialdom round him like a cloak and returned to the Yard to check on the latest developments from Whitechapel and—I strongly suspected—to tell everyone how he had masterminded another coup—with a little help from that consulting detective fellow … what was his name?… in Baker Street.
Mycroft with a touching old world gallantry—insisting on escorting Irene back to Covent Garden, stressing that it was, in reality, on his way back to Pall Mall.
As she left, Irene went up to Holmes. She said not a word but gently put both arms around him and for a moment laid her head on his shoulder. The rest of us busied ourselves collecting our bits and pieces preparatory to departing. Then she took Mycroft’s arm and hurried out of the room.
Wilde was the last to leave. He rose to his feet, still holding his glass and raised it to Holmes and myself.
