The cab driver hastened to carry out Holmes’ instructions, and Wilkins went with Mrs Hudson to place a telephone call through the central exchange. Challenger stood in the doorway, his massive bulk blocking it as surely as the stoutest oak barrier. The hansom was tied at curbside, but so thick was the sooty fog that he more heard the nickerings of the horse than actually saw either the animal or the cab. The darkness enshrouding the street was almost absolute. A few of the houses had been fitted with the new electric, but most were still gaslit, as was the street itself, but these illuminations did little to reveal what might be prowling Baker Street. Except for the cab driver’s nervous animal, it seemed as if the whole of London was wrapped in a terrible silence. He could barely breathe in the closeness of the night.
London was at once the greatest city on the surface of the planet, a brilliant beacon in the world’s nighttime, and a place of darkness and pain. He had explored the farthest reaches of Africa and South America, propelled as much by his insatiable curiosity as by a periodic desire to escape London’s air and reeking humanity. Yet he always returned to the confines of man’s greatest metropolis. The irony was not lost on him.
Challenger’s brow furrowed and he slowly swept his gaze about, as if he could dispel the gloom by dint of will alone. He had lived through many London Particulars, as Dickens’ Mr Guppy would have characterized the fog, many worse than this early morning toxin, but none had ever seemed more ominous. It might be nothing more than a reaction to what the tide of night-fog had deposited on Holmes’ door-step, but, even so, it seemed the scent of evil hung heavy in the foetid air.
Finally deciding the night was not going to give up any of its secrets, he closed the door. He paused, then dogged the heavy bolt into place.
“Look at these tattoos,” Holmes said as Challenger entered the room and reported the street’s apparent emptiness.
Wilkins had drawn the cab driver away from the body and was questioning him softly. There was no sign of Mrs Hudson. Challenger neared the mutilated body. Holmes offered the naturalist the use of his glass.
Challenger shook his bearded head. “I can see quite well enough.” He carefully examined the designs upon the man’s body. He had seen death many times in the wild places of the world, but it was not an acquaintance to which he had ever become accustomed. “A sailor, obviously,” he said, “a well traveled one.”
“Very,” Holmes agreed. “India, Arabia, New Zealand, Siam…”
“Cochin, Tonga, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Ceylon—the poor devil’s skin is as much a tribute to Britain’s mercantile empire as it is to the needlist’s art,” the scientist observed.
“Ah, what do you make of this mark just beneath his left arm, partially obscured there?” Holmes asked.
“It’s been badly lacerated,” Challenger said. “Curious symbol. It looks to be some fabulous animal, some sort of sea monster, very crudely done. Good God!”
“Ah, you note its true nature,” Holmes said with satisfaction.
“Yes, it’s not a tattoo at all,” Challenger replied. “He was branded. What does it mean? Could it have anything to do with the reason he died.”
Holmes lowered his chin to his fist upon his chest and stared intently, silently at the body on the table.
After what seemed an eternity, Holmes said. “This man was not killed with a knife or any number of them, was he?”
Challenger shook his head. “I wondered about that the moment I saw him. Had I encountered him in the wild, I would have assumed him killed by some sort of animal, but the claw marks are definitely not those of a bear or one of the great cats. In that case I would expect to see parallel furrows, but here the tracks are all singular, even though there are a great many of them.”’
“But they are claw marks?” Holmes asked.
“No doubt about that,” Challenger replied. “There’s a raggedness and an inconsistency of depth that you do not get with knife or sword wounds. And they’re not bite marks either, for there would be patterns that are plainly absent from our victim.”
“You talk like a forensic surgeon,” Wilkins observed, turning away from Alfred Paisley.
“A naturalist must often be a doctor in the wilderness, at least enough to sew up wounds and cure illnesses to incur the gratitude of tribal chiefs,” Challenger explained. “As to the other, I know how animals kill.”
“And you contend our dead sailor was killed by an animal?” Wilkins asked.
“If it were not such an impossibility in the heart of London,” Challenger replied, “I would swear to it in open court. As it is, I will only swear that this man was not killed by any weapon with which I am familiar.”
Wilkins stoked his chin. “That seems to support what Mr Paisley told me about the fare he picked up at Whitechapel.”
“Whitechapel?” Challenger rumbled. “Baker Street would be a bit out of your district, wouldn’t it?”
“Gave me a crown, ‘e did,” Paisley explained.
“What did you see when you picked up this man?” Holmes asked. “Please be precise and complete.”
The cabby shuffled his feet and cleared his throat several times. He was nervous, confronting death and the law, all in one night.
“Mr Paisley believes he may have seen some sort of animal,” Wilkins finally supplied.
“Ah, well, maybe not an animal, truly like,” Paisley quickly interjected. “Least not so’s I could swear to. An impression more’n anything else, Mr ‘Olmes, of something huge and dark out in the fog, big as a steam-train, having eyes like swinging lanterns. Looking back now, it’s ‘ard to say for sure there was anything there at all, though I knowed then that if I tarried and didn’t give me ‘orse free rein I’d be brown bread, like that poor bloke.”
“You saw he was severely injured then?” Holmes demanded.
“I saw ‘e was dying, Mr ‘Olmes.”
“Perhaps you would have been better of taking him to a physician,” Wilkins suggested. “If not to a private doctor, then the hospital in Whitechapel.”
Paisley emphatically shook his head. “Wasn’t far from dead when ‘e climbed up, he wasn’t. No doctor for Lazarus, and no rising up either. ‘Sides, he gave Mr ‘Olmes address, and I knew there was no better man to ‘elp a bloke, even a dead one.”
Sherlock Holmes smiled thinly. “You’re related to Wilbur Paisley.”
“Aye, that I am, sir,” Paisley admitted. “Me little brother.”
“The cracksman?” Wilkins exclaimed. “He was nicked last year by Lestrade.”
“Mr ‘Olmes sent Wilbur up to Dartmoor for a long stretch,” Paisley said. “A nice piece of work, it was.”
Challenger stared at the man in frank disbelief. “You’re a bigger man than I am, sir. I would not think well of a man who had sent my brother to prison, no matter how much he may have deserved it.”
“I proved that Wilbur Paisley was breaking into the safe of one Nigel Larkins, Solicitor, and not on the other side of London, murdering Lord Kettering.” Holmes explained. “I believe Lestrade is still upset about the case, though I did give him the murderer in the end.”
“Better a stretch at Dartmoor than being stretched at the gallows,” Paisley quipped. “Me brother’s always been a bad one, ‘e has, but ‘e’s me baby brother and ‘is mum’s lad, so there you are.”
“Can you be more specific about the animal you thought you saw?” Wilkins asked.
“’Fraid not, Inspector,” the man replied, sadly shaking his head. “A dead man climbs in me cab, me ‘orse gets spooked when nothing ever spooks ‘im, and the fog, it becomes something out of a gin nightmare—a bleeding ‘orror, and real enough by the looks of ‘im” He looked at the dead man and shuddered. “Cor!”
“You might do well, Inspector,” Challenger said, “to have photographic plates made of those wounds and show them to a good oceanologist. Marracott would be the best, but you’ll have a devil of a time tracking him down. Try the British Museum would be my advice, especially since the zoolog
y department has had more than enough time to completely set up in its new building.”
“You think, then, that this man was the victim of a actual animal attack and not murder?” Wilkins demanded.
“I think he might have been attacked by some kind of sea creature,” Challenger said. “However, I would not rule out murder, as the cause of death.”
Holmes was still minutely examining the body with his glass, currently concerned with his shoes. “He left Egypt, Alexandria most likely, not long ago, but he did so a fearful man. Despite the fact that his ship stopped in a number of ports, he remained in his cabin until reaching London. He started out on foot from one of the Docks, West India, it appears, and was attacked shortly thereafter. He ran, but could not escape his attackers—there were at least two creatures, perhaps three. He was not bound here originally, but sought me out when he knew he was dying. Regardless of the method of his death, he was murdered.”
Wilkins sighed. Now he understood why Lestrade was the way he was. “We should take a look in that package he was so keen to hold onto, don’t you think?”
“Indeed we should,” Holmes agreed. “With your permission, Inspector?”
Wilkins nodded.
Holmes easily untied the intricate knot (another indicator of the man’s nautical heritage, he pointed out) in the hemp cording, then carefully unwrapped the blood-stained oil-paper, revealing the object within.
“Blimey!” Paisley cried. Though he was not much of a religious man he made the sign of the cross, to make sure all knew he was on the side of the angels.
“Good Lord!” Wilkins exclaimed.
“Bloody hell!” Challenger growled.
“Fascinating,” Holmes murmured softly.
Chapter Three
In an ancient and massive house in the London borough of Kensington, constructed the same year the Domesday Book called the area Chenisitun, not far from the house in Bayswater Road where Thackeray died in 1863, a lean dark brooding man awaited a messenger’s arrival, in vain it now appeared. Rising from his plush chair, he scowled at the embering hearth, made a complex motion with his left hand, and croaked sounds few would have recognized. Flames leapt from the embers presenting an illusion of warmth.
Laslo Bronislav stood before the study’s huge leaded bull’s-eye window. Under normal conditions it would have afforded a view of the gothic spire of St Mary Abbots, the expanse of Kensington Gardens and Royal Albert Hall, and the sweep of the great city beyond. Now, however, he could see naught but this blasted toxic fog. It pressed against the glass with yellowish smearing fingers, like a miasmic and malicious creature from the inner circles of hell seeking entrance.
His brow furrowed in concentration and his bony fists balled with frustration. His surroundings appeared suddenly overtaken by darkness, and the fog seemed to thin before his gaze. A sense of weightlessness suddenly enveloped him, an ineffable lightness of being. To an outside observer, he appeared to stand stock still, staring at the roiling blankness of the fog, but, in truth, he was far from the house in which he dwelt whenever he was in London. He moved though the reaches of the air, or felt he did, a portion of his consciousness freed from physical restraints.
Though it was past midnight and the city was enshrouded by a thick fog, he saw scudding luminescent clouds of hues never used by even the most outré of artists. Savage lights burned in the astral sky. He heard sounds that would have driven another man mad, but Bronislav was a man who had long kept madness as a pet, and he was not at all awed by the Dark Moon that loomed apocalyptically over this astral version of London.
The London revealed by the lights of the Astral Plane had much in common with the London of the workaday world, seen by those men of limited vision and knowledge, men blinded by their seeing eyes, foolishly believing they saw all. There were, however, differences, for this spectral London was haunted by beings who were just as foolish and limited as the city’s corporeal plague, beings who shambled through repetitive, dimly sensed lives, mostly unaware of the human meat that swarmed unseen about them.
There were others still, neither astral nor corporeal. He was wary of them, for they were almost as dangerous as was he.
As was the nature of this realm, he did not arrive as much as a destination seemed to gather about him. It was a place of shades and broken spirits, of death and lingering deaths. The messenger he awaited had passed by this spot, but there was something else as well, a trace of darkness that even Bronislav could not fathom. Something dangerous and incredibly ancient had passed this way, seeking Bronislav’s messenger, several of them, as much terrors out of the deeps as out of time. Bronislav reached for a fragment of psychic residue, palm outward, and was nearly overcome by waves of hatred and death. He was surprised when he was forced to stagger back from its negative energy.
He heard a sound that was not a sound, felt more than saw a darkness moving through the shadows. The dark beings who had attacked his messenger still hunted the night. They did not seek the remains of the ragged man himself, though his death was intensely desired, but the object he carried. They quested for the same prize Bronislav coveted, he realized. Despite the danger, he remained close, seeking to discover what had become of his messenger.
A web of darkness reached for him. He had been discovered by the terrors of two realms. Bronislav sneered in disdain, lips curled in a savage snarling smile. He easily moved aside in a non-material way quite impossible to describe in physical terms.
Almost instantly, he was back in the study of his house in Kensington, standing before the great leaded bull’s-eye window, from which an observer would have sworn he had not moved for several minutes. He crossed his arms and lowered his chin contemplatively to his chest. His messenger had turned aside from his task, but where had he gone? That the great dark beings yet searched proved they had not taken custody of the messenger or his burden. It was of no importance whatsoever to Bronislav that India Jack Neville might be dead. All that mattered was the place of his death, for in that place he would find what he had expended so much time, effort and money to obtain. He was not about to let something as petty as a man’s death keep him from his desire.
A gentle rapping sounded at the study door.
“Enter,” Bronislav said without hint of any emotion.
Jensen entered. The manservant had been young when first entering his master’s employ, but he was now quite ancient. He was garbed in the manner of an English butler, an idiosyncrasy of his master’s whenever they were in England. He did not enjoy wearing the garments, would have rather worn the clothing of his now-distant homestand, but when it came to his master’s whims there was no room for discussion or dissent.
“There is a visitor, Mr Bronislav,” Jensen announced.
Bronislav almost gasped, but he managed to retain his composure. He knew what he had discovered in the night, but was prepared to put aside his conclusions. Was it possible his courier had escaped and made his way here after all? He did not see how it could be, but the object he desired was too important to him and his designs for him not to allow a little hope to taint his cynicism.
“Who is it Jensen?” Bronislav asked. “Does he appear to be a sailor? Speak up man!”
Jensen shook his silver-haired head. “No, sir, not the man you expected. He will not give a name. I told him it was too late to see you, but he insists it is of supreme importance, that he must see you at once. Do you want me to send him away, sir?”
What Bronislav wanted was to kill Jensen, or this midnight visitor, or anyone to assuage the disappointment he felt at his plans going awry. When embraced by a black mood, only bright blood would restore him. It was unlikely this stranger could have anything to do with the object he had hoped to acquire or his plans for it but, still, the timing was curious.
“Very well, Jensen, Bronislav said. “Show him up.”
“Yes, master, I…” Jensen’s eyes went wide at his slip, and he quickly said, “Yes, Mr Bronislav. Sorry, sir.”
It was a
lways hard on Jensen, Bronislav reflected, whenever they came to England, considering how much he hated the English for what they had done in his country. It had happened all so long ago, and yet Jensen’s hatred remained unabated. It was Jensen’s capacity for hatred more than efficiency—and certainly not any fondness—that caused Bronislav to retain his services this long rather than crush his withered throat.
The visitor was a man of slight build and auburn hair, dressed in a suit that had once been new, carrying a battered and scuffed solicitor’s case. He introduced himself as Geoffrey McBane, then offered his hand. Bronislav deigned to accept it.
“What is the purpose of your visit, Mr McBane?” Bronislav asked. “You told my servant that it was of paramount importance. If that is true, then stop wasting my time and get on with it.”
“Yes, sir, it is quite important, at least to you,” McBane replied. “It has to do with a man named John Neville. You are familiar with him as India Jack Neville, I believe?”
Bronislav’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“You were expecting a visit from him earlier this evening, were you not, Mr Bronislav?” McBane ventured.
Bronislav stepped close to the slight young man. “Toying with me is a deadly game! Why have you come? What do you want?”
“I was once in the employ of Professor Moriarty, whom you might know by reputation,” McBane said.
“A reputation is all that remains of Professor James Moriarty,” Bronislav observed wryly. “Since his death, his once-formidable organization has fallen into disarray, destroyed more by fighting and assassination from within than by the best efforts of Scotland Yard’s CID.” He looked over McBane’s worn suit and scuffed solicitor’s case. “Hard times for you, but what is that to me, and what have you to do with India Jack Neville?”
“And he object he was transporting for you,” McBane added.
Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) Page 24
