The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

by Otto Penzler

  Captain John Wagner approached. Ginger-haired and bearded, he was a sturdy sailor of the old school — hale, hearty and profane. In spite of my accident, I felt I was safe within his domain. He ran the tightest of ships.

  “Good evening, Mr. Holmes. Ah, Dr. Watson,” he blustered, “that such a thing should happen on my ship! I swear to you we’ll find the blackguard, and I’ll personally keelhaul him. My best men are on it.” His voice then softened. “You had us all right worried there, sir. Good to see you back up and about.”

  I thanked him for his good wishes and struck up a conversation about our quarry. “Tomorrow looks to be the day, doesn’t it, captain?”

  He laughed. “That’s your friend’s estimate, doctor. But it’s a big ocean. Hard to pinpoint a meeting date. Could happen any time.”

  “Could we miss him entirely?”

  His face hardened. “We won’t miss him. And once we encounter the blighter, we’ll bring him to. I’ll stake my reputation on that.”

  “Who’s at the wheel now, captain?” Holmes asked blandly, walking up to us. Throughout our discussion, he had stood at the ship’s rail, peering into the darkness.

  “That’d be my first mate, Jeffers.”

  “And the lookout?”

  Justifiably, I thought, the captain’s eyes narrowed. “What’s all this about, Mr. Holmes?”

  Holmes turned and pointed out over the bow. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, captain, there’s a ship running dark just off to starboard.”

  Wagner and I ran to the railing, squinting to make out a shape where Holmes had indicated. Before I had seen anything, the captain had turned, uttering a foul oath. As he rushed back to the bridge, his voice bellowing “Battle stations!” shook the very timbers of the ship.

  We were the wedge of the armada, and within minutes flares had alerted the rest of the fleet that something had been spotted. We had no way to be sure it was Colonel Moran, but the fact that the ship had its running lights covered was more than enough to convince me.

  Holmes stood beside me at the bow rail, his face a study in determination. “Now remember, Watson,” he said. “No one from that ship must be allowed aboard. All its crew will have been inoculated against the plague, but there’s no telling if any of them are infested with the fleas or lice that carry the disease.”

  “Are we to kill them all, then?” The men were fiends, but it was not like Holmes to be so cold-blooded.

  “No, no, we’ll shepherd them and their cargo of death to Goree, a small island in Dakar’s harbor which used to hold slaves waiting for transport. Captain Wagner knows the drill.”

  “And then . . . ?”

  “And then Moran and his men can swim for it while we blow their ship out of the water. The salt water will leach away any vermin, and the men are all sailors — they’ll have no trouble finding work....”

  He was about to continue when we heard a shot from somewhere behind us. I reached for my revolver and raced toward the sound, Holmes at my heels.

  “Here! Up here!”

  It was Jeffers, the first mate, staggering to his feet on the bridge, his hands to his bleeding head. At his feet lay a prostrate Captain Wagner.

  “The captain . . .’’Jeffers began.

  I was there beside him, but there was nothing I could do. Captain Wagner had a bullet hole in the back of his head. The gallant sailor had completed his last command.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  The mate appeared to be in shock. “I don’t know. I was hit from behind, and then ...”

  At that moment, the lookout shouted from above. “Enemy ship preparing to engage!”

  We looked over our shoulders and there, its running lights suddenly lit, a ship was bearing down on us on a collision course. Our crew, at battle stations, waited for the orders, but Jeffers seemed incapable of movement, watching horrified as the vessel approached.

  “We can’t let them engage.” Holmes spoke calmly to Jeffers, but his voice cut like a knife. “Think of your orders, man.”

  On the deck of the enemy ship, we could see the crew manning their battle stations, with small arms and grappling hooks at the ready. These were the same men who had captured the deadly Boer pirates only two weeks before. Jeffers looked about in panic, like a caged rat, and then suddenly screamed to his own waiting crew: “Fire! Fire! Fire all guns!”

  “NoF Holmes yelled, but his voice was drowned out by the simultaneous roar of fourteen cannons. Moran must have kept a magazine below decks, for no sooner had we recovered from the shock of the first sally than the night turned into day as the enemy ship, less than fifty yards from us now, exploded in a huge fireball.

  The force of the explosion knocked us off our feet, and we lay dazed for a moment in a shocking, deathly silence. And then, as though the brutality of what we’d just witnessed were not enough, a ghastly rain of burning timber and flesh began to fall and litter our deck.

  The falling debris started several small fires, and Jeffers forced himself up to direct the crew. Holmes and I sat by Wagner’s body and watched the floating remains of Moran’s ship flare, then smoke, as they slowly sank into the ocean.

  Holmes’s eyes were glazed over. His elbows rested on his knees, his hands limp between them. Glancing first at me, then at the fallen captain, he sighed aloud. “Wrong,” he muttered half to himself in a tone of pure anguish. “Where could it have gone so wrong?”

  There was no chance of sleeping. Eight bells in the third watch came and went, and still the crew kept at its cleanup duties. Jeffers had convened an officers’ tribunal and ordered that every man account for his whereabouts at the time the captain had been murdered. One by one, the men filed wearily into the captain’s stateroom, resentful and edgy. Holmes stood silent at the railing, smoking. His hunched shoulders left no doubt that he carried the burden of the deaths of Moran’s crewmen as though they were his own.

  I went to him. “It could not be helped,” I said.

  He looked coldly at me.

  “Holmes,” I insisted. “It was not your fault.”

  He shook his head. “It was not supposed to be that way. No one had to die. And we never got the proof.”

  “But surely the fact that they intended to engage .. . ?”

  “It doesn’t prove . . . Halloa,” he exclaimed. “What’s that?”

  I looked out at the black ocean. A glint of phosphorous showed above something moving in the dark water. “What could that be?” I asked.

  Holmes’s dark eyes glinted in the light from his pipe. A kind of smile began to play at the corners of his mouth, and I recognized that look: He was on a scent, when he thought it had eluded him. Then, at once, the half smile faded, replaced by a grimness I had never before witnessed in him. “The monster,” he said under his breath. “The unspeakable monster.”

  “Holmes,” I began, “what —”

  “Follow me,” he said, “and keep your gun handy.” He headed toward the bridge.

  “Mate Jeffers,” he yelled up from the deck, “there is a boat in the water.”

  The first mate, more haggard than ever, was struggling with the onus of command. He glared at Holmes as another interruption in an already impossible night. “What’s that you say, sir?” he yelled down.

  “There’s a boat in the water.” Holmes pointed. “There, at forty-five degrees off port.”

  The small boat could just barely be seen coming into the circle of light thrown by our ship. “My God,” said Jeffers. He seemed instantly rejuvenated, taking the steps down from the bridge in bounding leaps. “Could it be that someone survived?”

  “It would appear so,” my friend answered. I glanced then at Sherlock Holmes, and he had in his eye a look so dangerous that even I, who knew him so well, shuddered. Yet I could not for the life of me see what had so aroused him. Questions formed in my mind, but the fierceness of his countenance forced me to hold my tongue.

  Jeffers called for some men and had them begin preparing for the rescue. Out
in the night, I could just make out the lifeboat. On board was a single man, standing and waving. His “Ahoy,” small yet haunting, carried across the water. In the boat with him appeared to be a large box of some sort — probably, I thought, some possessions he’d managed to escape with before the ship exploded.

  As the boat approached, Jeffers leaned farther over the water to direct the crewmen’s operations. Just at that moment, Holmes lurched forward, grabbed the mate from behind and lifted him up and over the railing. With flailing arms and an anguished cry, Jeffers hit the water with a tremendous splash.

  “Holmes!” I cried.

  “There’s no time to explain! Quick, Watson, your weapon!”

  In a flash I had drawn my revolver and leveled it at the crew members gathered around us. Holmes remained calm. “I apologize for this inconvenience, gentlemen,” he said to them, “and after a moment it won’t be necessary, but for now I think it better that no one try to save Mr. Jeffers.”

  The mate rose to the surface, spluttering. “Holmes!” he called. “What’s the meaning of this? It’s mutiny! Watson, I’ll have you both hanged!”

  “I think the pleasure will be the other way round!” Holmes countered. “If you don’t drown first.”

  “Why should I hang?”

  “First for murdering Captain Wagner, then for blowing up Moran’s ship and not least for trying to poison Watson and me.”

  “You’re mad. They were going to ram us!”

  “No,” Holmes replied. “But for a moment it certainly did look that way, so that your disobedience of orders seemed logical.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The convoy was to herd the ship to Goree, not destroy it. And no one — no one at all, even a survivor — was to come aboard.”

  Jeffers treaded water awkwardly. Fully dressed as he was, the weight of his clothes would pull him down within minutes. The lifeboat, all but forgotten by us, was drifting steadily away from him.

  Jeffers went under briefly and came up gagging. Looking at the lifeboat, he tried a few halfhearted breaststrokes in its direction, but the effort was too great for him. He turned back to us, breathing heavily. “Help me, Watson, and I’ll see that you’re pardoned!” “If my friend hangs,” I called down, “I will gladly hang beside him.” Then, to Holmes, I said softly, ‘You’re not going to let him drown, are you?”

  “I rather think he’ll be saved.”

  But as we watched, Jeffers went under again. I thought the mate was gone, but once again he broke the surface. This time the panic in his voice was not feigned. He looked up at Holmes, then across to the lifeboat and came to his fateful decision. “Moran!” he yelled. “Help me! I’m drowning!”

  ‘You fool, Jeffers! Shut up!”

  Sherlock Holmes addressed me, finally allowing himself a smile. “As I suspected, they know each other by name. It is all the proof we need.” He called overboard. ‘You’d better see to Jeffers, Moran! The game is up.”

  “Who is that I’m speaking to?”

  Holmes chuckled mirthlessly. ‘You don’t recognize the voice, colonel? We’ve met occasionally.” He leaned over the railing. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes at your service.”

  “Holmes? What is this?”

  ‘You thought I’d be dead by now, eh? Poisoned?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We had better discuss it after you’ve saved your accomplice.” And, indeed, Moran had set to with his oars. Before long, the exhausted mate had been pulled into the lifeboat.

  “Now in the name of decency, Holmes, let us aboard!” Moran cried.

  ‘You have a great deal of gall using that word, colonel. What is that box behind you, sir?”

  Moran uncovered a huge cage in which skulked something large and black, looking from our deck like a small bear. “It is nothing more than a giant Sumatran tree rat, Holmes. I was taking it to the London Zoo. It was the only thing I could save from the ship.” “Before you blew it up?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you sacrificed your entire crew so that we would naturally pluck you and your giant rat of Sumatra from the lifeboat.

  You thought by now that Watson, Captain Wagner and I would all be dead and that no one would think to question your rescue.” “No!”

  “That rat is infested with bubonic plague, and you yourself are host to its deadly carrier fleas. Both you and Jeffers are inoculated, but once you or the rat comes aboard this ship, the England we all love is gone.”

  At the word plague, a general murmuring arose from the men behind us. Holmes turned and addressed them. ‘You heard me correctly. All your officers, including Jeffers, had been briefed — no one from Moran’s ship was to board a British ship of the line. Would any of you let Moran and Jeffers aboard?”

  “What should we do, sir?” one of the men asked.

  “Run to the stateroom and ask the ranking officer to take control here. Be off now!” Holmes turned back to the lifeboat. “Drop the cage overboard, Moran. Now!”

  We could hear the vicious growls and squeals of the caged beast. It stalked back and forth, beady eyes fixed on the lights of our ship. Moran hesitated a moment, then reached behind him.

  “Holmes, have pity ...” he began.

  “Fire a shot into the boat, Watson.”

  I did so.

  Holmes continued: “Colonel, you’re going to have a hard time staying afloat with a hull full of bullet holes.”

  “Please ...”

  “Another, Watson, if you would.”

  After the second shot, Moran quickly lifted the cage and dropped it into the black water. It sank like a stone, leaving no trace.

  One of the officers came running up. “What’s going on here, Mr. Holmes? Where’s Mr. Jeffers?”

  In a few dozen words the situation had been explained.

  “What should we do with these two men?”

  Holmes smiled. “I should think that that lifeboat, if towed at a goodly distance behind us, would make for an interesting journey back to England. Both men should be deloused by the time we arrive.”

  Back in our digs in Baker Street, Holmes put his feet up before the fire. We’d been back for nearly three weeks, and the trials of Moran and Jeffers were coming up, yet there were still elements unclear to me. “When did you know, exactly?” I asked.

  Holmes exhaled a heady Cavendish smoke. “I believe I have mentioned before, Watson, that when all other possibilities have been exhausted, whatever remains, however implausible, must be the truth. As soon as I saw the lifeboat in the water, a conjecture occurred to me. No lifeboat could have survived that explosion. Therefore, it had been lowered before the explosion. It follows, then, that the explosion was planned. When Jeffers did not hesitate to try to bring the survivor aboard, I surmised that he was in on the plot. Of course, I had to risk mutiny to prove it, butjeffers’s involvement was the only thing that fit all the facts.”

  “But he was bleeding when we came upon him and Captain Wagner.”

  “Nothing is more convincing and easier to self-inflict than a superficial head wound.”

  “And our — ahem — my poisoning?”

  “The crewman said that the tea was from the bridge. We both assumed he meant from the captain. But a man of Captain Wagner’s personality would imprint it on his men, and if he had personally sent the drinks, the crewman would have said, ‘Captain Wagner sends his compliments,’ or some such thing.”

  “Now that you explain it, it seems so clear.”

  “Don’t punish yourself, my friend. Neither of us saw it at the time. It was not until I saw Moran in the lifeboat that I was forced to reconsider the smallest events in the chain.”

  The fire burned low. “And what, finally, of Professor Moriarty?” I asked.

  Holmes sighed. “Not Moran, nor Jeffers, nor Culverton-Smith will implicate him. For the present we’ve foiled him, but I fear Moriarty and I must await another confrontation.”

  “And what then?”
I asked, looking into my friend’s troubled face. Sherlock Holmes gazed glassy-eyed into the fire. “And then, Watson,” he said, “then one of us must surely die.”

  Night Crawlers

  from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

  There’s plant life in parts of the Everglades that’s to be found nowhere else in the country, spores carried by hurricane winds from the West Indies that take root and flourish in the steamy tropical climate and are exotic and primitive and sometimes dangerous. Some say that in Mangrove City there’s animal life to be found nowhere else.

  Mangrove City isn’t really a city unless you use the term generously. It’s a stretch of ramshackle, moss-marred clapboard buildings where the road runs through the swamp along relatively dry land. The “city” is a few small shops, a restaurant, a service station with a sign warning you to fill your gas tank because the swamp’s full of alligators, a barber shop with a red and white barber pole that’s also green with mold. There’s a police station in the same rundown frame building as the city hall, and a blackened ruin that was Muggy’s Lounge until it burned down five years ago. Next to the ruin is the new and improved Muggy’s, constructed of cinder block and with a corrugated steel roof. Not a city, really. Barely a town. More like something unfortunate that happened on the side of the road.

  A mile before you get to Mangrove City, that is before if you’re driving west the way Carver had, is the Glades Inn, a sixteen-unit motel. It’s a low brick structure, built in a Uto embrace a swimming pool. Carver couldn’t imagine anyone ever actually swimming in the thing. The algae on its surface was green and thick. A diving board sagged toward the water and was draped with Spanish moss. From the far corner of the pool came a dull plop and a stirring of sluggish water as a bullfrog, tired of Carver’s scrutiny, hopped for green cover. Carver set the tip of his cane on the hot gravel surface of the parking lot and limped toward the office.