‘Where are the felons?’ he roared.
For all of its volume, his voice remained a harsh, insinuating whisper, like a file rasping against rusted steel. Every eye in the place was upon him. His murderous gaze swept the room, finally falling upon Holmes and me, whereupon it took on an even more dangerous glint.
‘There they are, the cursed scoundrels!’
In two leaps he was at our table. For a tense moment he stood looking from one to the other of us, his breath passing sibilantly through his arched nostrils. ‘Which of you is the ringleader?’ he demanded.
‘You, I take it, are Edward Hyde,’ said Holmes, rising. He towered over the new-comer by nearly a foot.
‘Ah, so you are the one behind it!’ The small man took a cautious step backwards, balancing his cane in one hand like a bludgeon. He had short hands, muscular and covered with hair; I was reminded, if I may bring forth yet another beast for comparison, of the paws of an ape. ‘You and your companion entered my rooms tonight without my permission, and do not attempt to deny it. I smelt the burnt oil of the lamp you used. When I confronted my landlady with the knowledge, she broke down and told me everything. She described you both in detail and said that you walked off in this direction.’
‘I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend and colleague, Dr. John H. Watson. We have long been eager to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hyde. Would you care to join us in a whisky-and-soda whilst we discuss this like gentlemen?’
‘Gentlemen? You are common burglars! Sir, I demand satisfaction!’ he raised his cane.
I leapt to my feet, prepared to come to my friend’s defence. He shook his head and waved me back.
‘Thank you, Watson, but this is my affair.’ He assumed a boxer’s stance.
For a charged moment it appeared that the two might actually come to blows; there was a scraping of chairs as the customers seated near us vacated their tables, and Holmes and Hyde squared off beside our own in the manner of warring rams. But before either of them could make a move Stürmer came striding out from behind the bar bearing a two-foot length of loaded billiard-cue and brought it smashing down onto the table between them with a report like an explosion. The noise made both of them jump.
‘I said no rows and, by God, I meant it!’ The German’s booming voice set every glass in the room to rattling. He caught my eye. ‘Take your friend and go. I’ll hold back Hyde till you’re out of sight. After that, whatever happens don’t concern me. Schnell!’
Holmes and I needed no further invitation. We picked up our hats and sticks from the table and headed for the door whilst Stürmer held a fuming Hyde at bay with his club.
‘You see the value of foresight, old fellow,’ said Holmes as we stepped into the hansom waiting around the corner. ‘When one sets out to commit a criminal act, an escape well planned is its own reward.’
It was his last attempt to place a light face upon the night’s activities. On the way home the detective sank into a deeply brooding frame of mind. ‘Dark forces at work here, Watson,’ said he, staring out into the gloom that closed in upon the cab.
I made no reply, for I was seeking to duplicate the methods of my friend in analysing my strangely primitive reaction to the character of Edward Hyde. The threats which he had uttered were quite beside the point, since I had formed my opinion before I was even aware of his identity, or of whom his anger was directed against. Try as I might, however, I succeeded only in recalling the following nursery-rhyme from my childhood, which until that evening had always seemed the merest bit of nonsense, but which had now taken on a most profound meaning:
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know and know full well,
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
Four
BLANK WALLS AND WALNUT-STAIN
We won’t starve to death, at any rate,’ announced my companion, once we had returned to our digs and the gas was lit. ‘Mrs. Hudson is a treasure among land-ladies.’
The source of his praise was a cold fowl supper which had been laid out upon the sideboard in our absence. We sat down over it and two glasses of Beaune — it had been no evening for the gentler influence of port — and ate for some minutes in silence. Then: ‘What now?’ I asked.
‘Sleep,’ said he. ‘We shall need all we can get, for tomorrow will prove a busy day for both of us. You, for instance — if my advice is worth anything — are going to pay a call upon your club and renew old acquaintanceships. It has been far too long since your last visit.’
‘And you?’
‘I shall be doing my level best to keep the cabmen of this city in business as I travel from bank to records bureau to Scotland Yard and points beyond in an attempt to ferret out the life story of Edward Hyde, celebrated dilettante and heir to the Jekyll fortune. “Know thine enemy”, Watson, for an enemy is what he is most certainly shaping up to be.’
‘Your health —’ said I.
‘— will be none the worse for a brisk jaunt about London,’ he finished. ‘You are always after me to take exercise.’
‘So long as you do not over-do it.’
‘My dear fellow, it is inactivity which exhausts me.’ He got up from the table. ‘Into the arms of Morpheus, then, and when next we speak it is my hope that we shall have a solid foundation of data upon which we can build some sturdy conclusions.’
But I was not taken in by his sudden desire for sleep. Long after I retired, as I lay awake sorting through the vagaries in the relationship of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I smelt tobacco-smoke and heard the steady tread of Holmes’s feet as he paced to and fro in the bedroom below mine, drawing on his pipe and mulling over the problem upon an intellectual plane which was without doubt far loftier than my own. Such late hours were dangerous to his constitution, but I was in no mood to hear another lecture upon the evils of extortion versus the well-being of a single mortal. I went to sleep with that monotonous tramping still in my ears.
Holmes had breakfasted and gone by the time I arose the next morning; there was a note upon the sideboard reminding me of his advice of the night before, but since it was raining heavily outside I decided to forgo my club and settled down instead to a day of reading. It was close upon five o’clock when the door opened and in dragged my friend with a crestfallen look upon his face. He nodded a halfhearted greeting and slumped heavily into his velvet-lined armchair.
‘You have just come from the Bank of England, I perceive,’ said I, hiding what I fear was an impish smile behind the book I was reading.
He glanced at me in some surprise. At length he smiled, in spite of his obvious exhaustion. ‘Wherever did you obtain that information?’ he asked.
I reveled in his reaction. It was not often that I was able to impress him, and it gave me added pleasure to know that for once I had bested him at his own game.
‘Elementary,’ I declared, closing my book and laying it aside. ‘You mentioned last night that one of the places you were planning to visit was a bank. When last I passed the Bank of England they were tearing up the street in front of the establishment, revealing a distinctive murky red clay beneath the pavement — a sample of which adheres to the sole of your left boot. You did not walk around it, hence your business was in the bank itself.’
Whilst I spoke, the detective had been examining the sole in question. Now he returned it to the floor and smacked his knee gleefully with the palm of his hand.
‘Excellent! Really, Watson, sounding your depths is a frustrating experience; I seem never to strike bottom. Your talents of observation have always been admirable, but now you have learnt to apply them practically. I congratulate you upon your growth.’
‘Then I was correct? You visited the Bank of England?’
‘No, I was nowhere near the institution.’
I stared. ‘But the clay — !’
‘Not clay, paint. They were touching up the sign over the entrance to Bradley’s when I stopped in for some shag, and I had
the misfortune to step into the drippings. But do not be glum, old fellow; you have provided the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak day.’
I nodded, for that had been my intention, though not quite in that manner.
‘Your investigations failed, then?’
‘On the contrary, they proved most bountiful, up to a point.’ He produced a pouch and began filling his cherry-wood.
‘And beyond that?’
‘Nothing. The bank I went to was the one in which Hyde keeps his account, which you would have deduced had you not fallen into the common trap of allowing a clue to obscure your own memory. The cashier whom I interviewed was reluctant to answer my questions until I convinced him that I had entered into a business dealing with Hyde and was confirming his credit, after which he became positively garrulous. It seems that Hyde opened the account a year ago. He had kept none previously.’
‘That does not seem so very unusual.’
‘Hear me out. From there I went to the records office in Whitehall, where a search of three and one half hours failed to turn up the name of Edward Hyde upon any document. Whoever he is, he was not born in England, nor does he own any property here under that name. The files at Scotland Yard proved equally empty. That left but one other place to try, and you can image my reluctance to go there after our experience of last night. Fortunately, our quarry was out again today, but it cost me no small sum to obtain the information which I required from his landlady. She is a very frightened woman today, Watson; I fear that her boarder has presented her with a grim ultimatum where any further doings with me are concerned. Thank heaven for our gracious Queen’s image in gold, which seems to outweigh such arguments.
‘It seems that Hyde took up residence at the Soho address at about the time he opened the afore-mentioned banking-account, and that in lieu of references from his last landlord he tendered six weeks’ rent in advance. He has, of course, said nothing to her about his former life.’ He shook his head and ignited his pipe. ‘It is most maddening. From whatever angle one approaches the problem, he encounters a blank wall circa October of 1882. It is as if Edward Hyde simply did not exist before that date.
‘Perhaps “Edward Hyde” is a pseudonym,’ I ventured.
‘Very likely, but what good does that do us, unless we have his real name as well? I described him in some detail for the detectives with whom I spoke at the Yard; it brought forth no flood of memories.’
‘He is not the kind one forgets easily.’ I shuddered at the recollection of last night’s encounter.
Holmes nodded and sent a great blue wreath of smoke floating ceilingwards. ‘He is rather odious, is he not? I don’t think that I have ever met a man upon whose countenance evil is more clearly stamped, and I have travelled among London’s worst. But this is getting us nowhere.’ He got up and strode towards his bedroom.
‘Where are you going?’ I rose.
‘Where you need not follow,’ said he, over his shoulder. The door closed behind him.
So sharp had been his retort, and so unexpected, that for a moment I was struck speechless and made no reply. As I thought about it, however, I was glad that I had not, for it was obvious from Holmes’s manner that he was operating beneath a severe strain. The activity of the past two days had placed a greater burden upon his weakened constitution than even I had realised. Seized with a sudden fear, I glanced towards the mantelpiece, but was relieved to see that his cocaine bottle and the morocco case in which he kept his hypodermic syringe were still there. His health was in a dangerous enough state without the added influence of those drug habits about which I have written elsewhere in these chronicles. I decided then that his bedroom was the best place for him at this point, and so did not pursue the matter, but lit a cigarette and sat down to consider the problem upon which we were engaged. This of course was useless, and all I gained was a sore throat. I was tossing a third cigarette-end into the grate when the bedroom door opened and a surprising figure stepped into the room.
In appearance it was a Lascar, one of those native sailors who ply their trade upon the East Indian seas. Beneath a crimson head-scarf, a lean face as swarthy as tree-bark stared with its one good eye cocked towards me, the other hidden behind a greasy black patch; from beneath the patch a hideous whitish scar described a ragged semi-circle down his left cheek to the corner of a sullen mouth. From the corner protruded the stub of a thick black cigar, now extinguished. His clothes were coarse and smeared all over with tar, his boots canvas and worn through at the toes. Had I not known that Holmes had been alone in the chamber, and that there was no way into it save through the door through which he had passed earlier, I would have been at a loss to identify the wretch who stood before me. From head to toe, it was not the sort of person whom I would prefer to have at my back in an East End alley.
‘Holmes,’ said I, ‘this time you have really out-done yourself. I should be surprised if you are not arrested the moment you step outdoors looking like that.’
He chuckled. ‘Thank you, Watson. I can always count upon you for an honest appraisal. You do not think that it is over-done?’
‘That depends upon your destination. I would not recommend, for instance, that you attend the theatre in that condition.’
‘And yet that is precisely where I am headed.’
‘My dear Holmes!’
Again he chuckled. ‘Calm yourself, Watson. In the crowd which frequents this particular establishment I shall be quite inconspicuous, I assure you. You will, I am certain, recall those ticket-stubs which I mentioned having found in Hyde’s rooms; it is that theatre which I plan to attend.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘His landlady, demonstrating a practical nature for which I should scarcely have credited her, told me that she had found a ticket for tonight’s performance in the pocket of his coat before sending it out to be cleaned this morning. My chances of finding him there this evening, then, appear better than even.’
‘What do you hope to learn by that?’
He shrugged. ‘Who can say? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. In any case, I shall learn more by a close observation of his habits than by wasting time with bureaucratic channels. No, no, my dear fellow, keep your seat; I shan’t be needing you tonight.’
‘You may not need me, but you shall have me nonetheless.’ I rose. ‘I am aware of the futility of attempting to dissuade you from the course which you have chosen, so I will not do so. However, I do insist that I accompany you to see that you do not over-exert yourself in this affair. Do not argue, Holmes; I defer to your superior knowledge in matters of detection, but when it comes to your health I recognise no master but myself.’
I expected anger, even scorn, but instead he favoured me with a sincere smile and his hand upon my shoulder. ‘Dear friend,’ he said warmly, ‘I did not realise that you felt so strongly about the state of my health. Of course I will not argue with you. You are well rested, I gather, since the dry-ness of your coat yonder and the depletion of this morning’s ample coal supply indicates that you disregarded my advice and stayed in today. Tell me, have you ever in your life performed a role upon the stage?’
I had not been prepared for this swift change of subject; it took me a moment to respond. Finally I said: ‘I portrayed an oak in my fifth-form production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream!’
He appeared puzzled. ‘No oak has a speaking role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream!’ said he.
‘Yes, I know.’
He laughed. ‘Well then, you shall not be called upon to speak tonight either. Come along.’
Holmes led me into his bedroom, where a basin filled with some dark liquid stood upon his wash-stand next to the bed. The bed itself, I noticed, was cluttered with unidentifiable paraphernalia. At his direction I took a seat upon the edge of the mattress, whereupon he instructed me to remove my collar and to bathe my hands and face in the liquid. I obeyed, and when I had finished he dipped in his own hands and completed the job round my ears and upon the back of my nec
k, rubbing with quick, nervous fingers. Next he bent over me, and, picking up various articles from the bed, began to apply things to my face, scraping, shaping, massaging, brushing — for half an hour he proceeded in this fashion until, with a ceremonious flourish, he tossed his instruments back upon the bed, dusted off his palms and stood back.
‘Done and done,’ said he. ‘There is a mirror upon that bureau; perhaps you would care to take a look at yourself before we proceed to the final stage in the transformation of John H. Watson, M.D.’
I did so, and was astounded by what I saw. There, glaring out at me from the depths of the mirror, was a half-caste Oriental of a particularly wicked type. Long, narrow eyes glittered malevolently against a background of yellow-brown skin, on either side of a shapeless lump of nose which looked as if it had been smashed in more than one waterfront brawl; beneath it, a row of opium-stained teeth flashed behind a lank black moustache. From my hairline down, the metamorphosis was complete. I was struck by the realism of this grotesque mask, which could not have been more alien to the face which I was accustomed to shaving each morning. As in so many things, when it came to the art of disguise Holmes was indeed a wizard.
I told him as much. He waved away the compliment. ‘You praise me now,’ said he, ‘but your words may sour later, when you attempt to remove that walnut stain. But try these on; I think that they will harmonise quite smoothly with your new image.’
He had thrown open his trunk and from its recesses drawn out sandals, a filthy pea-jacket, cotton trousers, and a battered bowler, all of which I quickly donned. After that, a final glance towards the mirror was enough to assure me that my mother, were she still living, would not have recognised me.
‘Bear in mind that you are now a deaf-mute and that if there is any speaking to be done it is I who shall do it,’ Holmes admonished. ‘And slip your revolver into your coat pocket, just in case.’
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Dr Jekyll & Mr Holmes Page 5
