Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu

by Lois H. Gresh

  She glanced at the cane in my other hand.

  “But surely, you need to sit,” she said. “You don’t look well, Doctor.”

  Rather than sit in Dr. Sinclair’s office, Holmes strode to the door leading to the treatment room.

  “Dr. Watson is fine. He’s cured,” Holmes said, as my knees buckled and I nearly fell. I pushed myself off the edge of the desk and tottered across Sinclair’s office to join Holmes by the treatment room door. He looped an arm through mine, for which I was grateful, and addressed Miss Klune. “Please obtain both Bligh Braithwaite and Willie Jacobs for me, would you? I trust you have no issues with what we are about to do, which in brief, equates to killing those monsters in the river.”

  With her ice-blonde hair knotted in a tight bun and her ice-blue eyes trained on Holmes, she responded in a clipped voice carefully modulated to betray no trace of emotion. I had the sense that everything about Miss Klune was based on her long years of service at the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum.

  “I understand the urgency of your mission,” she said.

  “Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Braithwaite, then, and quickly?” Holmes pressed.

  “Yes, I’ll get them.” As she left the office, she turned and added, “Then I’ll be in the day room, if you need me.”

  Waiting until she must be far down the hall, Holmes hurried from the room, and I sank into the chair of the left Eshocker. In moments, the bloodstained chair of the right Eshocker would be occupied by a new patient, who might die during extreme treatment.

  In short measure, Holmes returned with Timmy and a companion. Although I expected the arrival of the boy and our new patient, my heart sank anyway, and a sadness fell over me. Medical discoveries were often made by those who experimented on animals, and even on human beings. Indeed, we learned about our own bodies by carving up corpses.

  As Timmy pushed a calf through the door into the treatment room, Miss Klune followed with an equally reluctant Bligh Braithwaite along with Willie Jacobs.

  “Dr. Sinclair would never have permitted this,” she said. “His office was a sanctuary. This treatment room was private and carefully controlled. His Eshockers were his life.”

  “I admire your loyalty,” Holmes said, as he and Timmy roped the calf to the Eshocker chair legs and armrests. There was no way the calf could fit on the seat. Its tail swished by the open Eshocker box. Its eyes blinked at the left Eshocker. Chewing and blinking steadily, unaware of what was about to happen—this is not a patient, I thought, but rather, an animal about to be inhumanely used in a medical experiment.

  “Holmes…” I whispered, and then I said firmly, “You know how I feel about this type of experiment. I know that medical science has moved into modern times, that our doctors examine corpses and live animals in hopes of determining how to treat human ailments and save lives. But still, I strongly object to torture, Holmes.”

  “As do I, Doctor,” Holmes said. “It is not my intention to torture this animal. Medicine is your profession, and what we’re doing today may save countless lives.”

  “Yes,” I muttered. “Yes, I know, Holmes, but—”

  “Timmy procured this poor beast from the slaughter house,” Holmes told me, “so its destiny was already sealed. In fact, if Timmy hadn’t brought this calf here, you might have dined on it tomorrow.”

  Timmy, who had learned from his father how to butcher slaughtered animals, nodded in agreement.

  “We best be gettin’ on with it,” the boy said. “Mr. ’olmes figured ’ow to ’elp you with your infection an’ also those in the dens. ’E now will figure ’ow to kill the beasts in the Thames. We best let ’im get to work, Dr. Watson.”

  I limped to the Eshocker across the room, where I fell onto the chair. Timmy was lecturing me about medical experimentation. Of course, the boy was right, but he was accustomed to the brutality of animal slaughter, whereas I healed the sick. We saw things from different perspectives.

  “Go ahead,” I told Holmes, “do what you must.”

  Miss Klune glared at Holmes and shook her head.

  “Evil,” she said, “evil. Now, if you’re done with me, sir…”

  Holmes waved her from the room, told Jacobs to shut the door, and then filled his pipe. For several moments, he puffed steadily and stared at Bligh Braithwaite, who twitched and drooled by the Eshocker we’d previously used on the lamb. Braithwaite seemed more excited than usual. His right hand rose to his mouth, and shaking, wiped off the drool. I knew of no cure for Braithwaite’s seizures, his inability to control his limbs, his need to fall on the floor and twist his body into shapes, his gibberish. I wanted to reach out, take hold of the man, comfort him, and return him to his room and bed. But Holmes was certain that Bligh Braithwaite had killed Dr. Reginald Sinclair.

  Holmes set his pipe on the counter of the medical cabinet, then eased Braithwaite away from the Eshocker and propped him against the wall, where Willie Jacobs stood on weak and trembling legs. Braithwaite slipped to a sitting position, and Jacobs followed.

  Opening the lid of the Eshocker box, Holmes stroked the calf, which lowed softly. Gently, he ran his fingers along the animal’s head and its flanks.

  “I will gain no pleasure,” he said, “from what is about to transpire in this room, but it must be done.” Still soothing the animal, he addressed Bligh Braithwaite. “You, sir, knowingly murdered Dr. Sinclair. You were alone in this room with the murdered man. The room was locked, and nobody could have entered it. You acted with forethought and malice. You wanted him dead. The question is, why?”

  As for me, I remained interested in learning how, but upon hearing Holmes, Braithwaite wailed and tears flooded his eyes. Willie Jacobs flinched and covered his ears.

  “Let me briefly go over the facts.”

  “N-n-no…” Braithwaite begged. “I cannot hear it… no!”

  “You will hear it, sir. Further, you will admit to what you’ve done, and, to avoid a horrible death at the hands of the hangman, you will tell me how to ramp up the voltage of this Eshocker such that it will kill those creatures in the Thames.”

  “You’re correct,” Willie Jacobs managed to say from his rotted-flesh mouth with its open sores. With each word, he grimaced, but loyal to the end, he apparently wanted to help us, and so he spoke, enunciating each word slowly and spacing his words so he could cope with the pain. “Bligh’s an expert with the Eshockers. He knew ’em as soon as ’e arrived ’ere. ’E ’ated Sinclair more than me. Bligh knows what ’e’s done!”

  Suddenly, Braithwaite’s body spasmed, and he fell across Jacobs’s lap, his face turned toward Jacobs. Braithwaite balled his hand into a fist. Jacobs weakly swat at it, unable to grab hold of the other man’s wrist. Braithwaite’s fist crashed into Jacobs’s phossy jaw—the exposed bone cracked, blood trickled down Jacobs’s chin, and his head snapped back. He screamed and squirmed sideways and out of the other’s reach.

  “Y-you shut up! Y-you say n-nothing! Y-you kn-know-know nothing!” Braithwaite shrieked. His torso spasmed again, his arms twisted outward at the elbows, his tongue lolled from his lips.

  I pushed myself from the Eshocker chair and limped to the two men, where I crouched and threw an arm around Willie Jacobs’s shoulders.

  “Please, sir,” I cried to Braithwaite, “you must control yourself! This man is innocent of any wrongdoing!”

  “H-he doesn’t know!” Braithwaite screamed.

  “Gentlemen,” Holmes said as he soothed the calf, which was now struggling against the Eshocker restraints, “all of you, calm down and be quiet. Remain still. Please. Watson, stay with Mr. Jacobs. As for you, Mr. Braithwaite, I am done with your histrionics.

  “We will now expose the truth. This man—” Holmes pointed at Braithwaite—“knew how the Eshockers worked when he arrived at the Whitechapel Lunatic Asylum. Although Dr. Sinclair wouldn’t treat local men in need of his help, he did treat Bligh Braithwaite. He did not send you back to the Kandinsky Asylum, sir, from which you escaped. You came here, sir, and why?”<
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  “For God’s sake, Holmes, tell us!” I cried, not for the first time in recent days.

  “It’s elementary, dear fellow,” Holmes said calmly, his eyes trained on Bligh Braithwaite, who inched like a worm, straining to reach the closed and locked door. I clamped one hand on his ankle to keep him in place. My other arm remained around Willie Jacobs’s shoulders.

  “Mr. Braithwaite came to the asylum specifically to see Dr. Sinclair. He already knew how the Eshockers worked and how to build them. There’s only one way someone locked in a lunatic asylum far away would possess this knowledge. You, sir,” he said to Braithwaite, “helped Dr. Sinclair create the Eshockers, didn’t you? And you wanted some of the money from the sales of those Eshockers, didn’t you? You wanted the credit, you wanted people to know you were the brains behind the Eshockers, that you aren’t just a neural psychotic—no, sir, you are far more than that!”

  Braithwaite slapped the floor, untwisted his arms, and curled to his side with his eyes jittering at Holmes.

  “I-I me-me,” he stammered, then stopped, visibly trying to control his outburst and physical disability.

  “R-Reggie and m-me g-grew up t-together,” Braithwaite continued. “I-I invented the Eshocking machine. I-I wanted to c-cure myself. R-Reggie p-put m-me in Kan… Kandinsky.” Braithwaite’s body went limp, the fight drained out of him.

  “You invented the Eshocker?” Holmes said.

  “Y-yes…”

  “You confronted your childhood friend, Reggie Sinclair?”

  “Y-yes…”

  “And when Dr. Sinclair laughed at you—”

  “Y-yes!” Braithwaite wailed. “H-he laughed at m-me!”

  “When he laughed at you,” Holmes said, “and refused to acknowledge your technical contributions and your expertise… when he refused to acknowledge that you are not insane, and that indeed, you are an entirely rational and intelligent man—”

  At this, Braithwaite clutched at his hair, ripping at it, clawed at his face, ripping at it, and shrieked a stream of incomprehensible syllables.

  Holmes waited for the man to calm a bit, then continued:

  “You suffer from a malady, in which you do not have complete control over your movements. You fall down. Your body twists. Even your mouth and vocal cords are not fully under your control. However, your mind is quite rational. You knew what you were doing, Mr. Braithwaite. Dr. Sinclair Eshocked you one too many times while refusing to admit—even to himself—how valuable your contribution was. So you turned your creation on him. You waited until he was weak—from what, Mr. Braithwaite?”

  “S-s-s-s-s… old-old…”

  “Old Ones Serum,” I said softly. “You took advantage of Dr. Sinclair when he was seeing colors perhaps, unable to keep his eyes open… when he was out of his senses and drunk, as well.”

  “Y-yes,” Braithwaite blubbered. “I-I strapped him into the Eshocker. No struggling. G-gagged him. Just as he did to us all, I did to him! And he deserved it, he did!” His voice gained strength, and Jacobs gasped.

  “Y-you Eshocked the doctor,” Jacobs groaned.

  “I-I did! I-I did it, and for all of us, Willie!” Braithwaite cried.

  “No, sir. You did it for yourself. For revenge,” Holmes corrected. He lifted his hand from the calf, glanced at me, and turned his back. Bending, he leaned into the Eshocker box. “I’ve attached the blue wire, Mr. Braithwaite, just as you did when you murdered Dr. Sinclair.”

  “That won’t do it,” Jacobs rasped.

  “No, it won’t,” Holmes said, “but you see, Mr. Jacobs, I’ve already removed the transformer from the other Eshocker that’s always in this room. With Dr. Sinclair strapped into this Eshocker and gagged, Mr. Braithwaite could take his time. A simple twist of some screws, and he lifted the transformer from the other Eshocker. The transformer is not that heavy, and it’s portable. Mr. Braithwaite placed this additional transformer behind the variable and fixed resistor units in this Eshocker. There’s plenty of room in the box to place another transformer. The two AC wires were already there, waiting for him, attached to the first transformer. He unscrewed the other ends of those two AC wires, one from the variable resistor unit, the other from where it was attached to one of the two forehead electrodes. He simply screwed the wires into the second transformer and attached its two AC wires to the variable resistor unit and electrode.”

  “What?” I said.

  But Willie Jacobs understood Holmes. He was an expert with modern machinery. He had built the tram machine with his father. He had helped Dr. Sinclair and Bligh Braithwaite wire these Eshockers.

  “Mr. ’olmes is right,” Jacobs rasped. “It ain’t no effort to add a secon’ transformer to the Eshocker. When ’e’s not sufferin’ from them twitchin’s, Bligh can wire anythin’ faster than anyone I ever known.”

  “And then after murdering Dr. Sinclair,” Holmes said, “it would take no effort to return the second transformer to the other Eshocker from whence it came.”

  “Exactly,” Jacobs said.

  “But how did it kill?” I asked.

  “The transformer increased the voltage applied to the victim,” Holmes explained. “Getting sixteen volts of AC using one transformer, Braithwaite pumped out far more voltage using that second transformer. A simple calculation indicates the voltage was sixteen volts multiplied by sixteen volts, for a total of 256 volts of alternating current, surely enough to kill any man.”

  “Y-yes.” Braithwaite had ceased weeping. He was clearly proud of what he had done. Still stuttering, his eyes glowed as he explained. “I-I designed the Eshocker for easy building and service. P-plenty of room for the s-second transformer.”

  “Dr. Sinclair was overworked and under a lot of stress. I suspect he was not well—” Holmes suggested.

  “A heart condition,” I added.

  “Y-yes,” Braithwaite confirmed. “H-he had a weak heart, and in many ways. H-he went easily into the chair. After k-killing him, I-I returned the s-second transformer to the other Eshocker. An easy m-matter. Twist-off screws.”

  Would Dr. Sinclair have died from heart failure had Braithwaite not electrocuted him? Had the murder really been necessary?

  I assumed it had been necessary for Bligh Braithwaite. Sinclair had stolen everything from Braithwaite, he had stolen his very life. Braithwaite must have wanted to take Sinclair’s life, in return. I’d never forget the murder scene. Dr. Sinclair’s chest ripped down the center, his burned brains, guts, and flesh, the pools of coagulating blood, the charred remnants of the white doctor’s coat. The brains dripping from the ceiling and the medical supply cabinets.

  I’ve had enough of murder, I thought.

  “My old friend,” I said, “surely we can do this without killing that calf. Mr. Braithwaite has confirmed your deductions and admitted his crime and its method. There is no need to show him how he killed Dr. Sinclair using this animal.”

  Holmes straightened himself and turned to me. His hand reached to the calf’s head again. The animal was so placid, innocent, unknowing…

  “Of course, Dr. Watson. I never intended to kill this poor beast. The animal was present just in case Mr. Braithwaite needed extra motivation to tell all. Yet given what Dr. Sinclair took from Mr. Braithwaite, I suspected our man would break, weary of his silence, and tell us what we needed. He doesn’t wish to be hanged—do you, Mr. Braithwaite? I will vouch for you if you cooperate with us, and my word is powerful with lawmakers. Don’t worry, Dr. Watson, we will do without the animal.”

  “Holmes,” I cried, “that’s wonderful!”

  “And now,” he said, “without further ado, we must design and create a Killer Eshocker.”

  PART THREE

  BATTLE ON THE THAMES

  46

  DR. JOHN WATSON

  London

  The four of us—Sherlock Holmes, Willie Jacobs, Bligh Braithwaite, and I—worked day and night, rarely leaving the back room of the asylum. I missed Samuel’s first Christmas and wondered if M
ary missed me as much as I missed her. Willie Jacobs, knowing his life would end soon, worked as hard as he could to help us build the machines. Braithwaite also worked hard, but in his case, because he wanted to avoid a death sentence. At the request of Dr. Sinclair’s executors, Miss Klune had taken over the direction of the asylum until it could be sold. Once it was made known to her that our continued presence was vital to rid the city of the monsters in the Thames, she undertook to supply us with food, drink, and beds—for a fee.

  My strength returned, and I was able to set aside my cane. Holmes had been correct about pulsing the doses of Eshocker treatment to clear my mind of the creature infestation. Others in London reported successful treatment, as well, and Timmy often stopped by to help us build the machines and supply news from the outside world.

  “Miss Scarcliffe an’ Maria are missin’,” he told us as he wound the last of the coils around the huge transformer. “If Moriarty ’as ’em, I ain’t ’eard.”

  Holmes lifted a harpoon over his head as if to throw it, then set it back down on a work bench. On the floor, loosely wound copper coiled around the cable that would send an alternating current through the harpoon. He stepped around the cable, leaned on a table holding the short copper pipe, and smoothed down his trousers. He’d neither shaved nor combed his hair in days.

  “I’ll send word about Miss Scarcliffe and Miss Fitzgerald. The authorities must find them and put them under heavy guard. Moriarty will want them back. They are his only hope of getting gold from the tram machine.” He brushed hair off his face, speaking about the powerful Dagonites as if they were a minor point. His mind was on the Killer Eshocker and the creatures in the Thames.

  On December 31, 1890, as we finished building the components of the Killer Eshocker, Lestrade marched into the Whitechapel Asylum and notified us that he had finally convinced his superiors that Mr. Willie Jacobs spoke the truth, that Miss Switzer had attempted to kill him with a lethal injection of drugs. Lestrade arrested her on the spot.