Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares
Page 14
Cauchemar’s bright blue eyes betrayed a flicker of surprise, which confirmed Holmes’s deductions.
“It is one thing to read about your uncanny ability to divine a stranger’s history from just a handful of personal traits,” he said. “It is quite another to see it put into action at first hand.”
“The novelty never wears off,” I commented. “Although it is preferable when Holmes practises it upon somebody other than oneself.”
“Furthermore,” said Holmes, “you have travelled, and even resided for some time on the Continent. France, to be precise.”
“What gives you cause to say that?”
“Elementary. Your adopted surname. A French word. Granted, you could simply have learned ‘cauchemar’ at school or plucked it from a dictionary, but it seems to me a very specific choice, one that has significance for you. Ergo, you must have lived in France and absorbed some of that nation’s culture. The Francophone regions of Canada were a possibility, or one of the French- or Belgian-dominated African nations, but France itself seemed, on balance, likeliest. An English nom de guerre, perhaps even ‘Baron Nightmare’, would have made sense if your goal was purely to intimidate the thieves and murderers of the East End, but there is more to your activities than that. I’d add that bestowing a peerage upon your armoured alter ego is no arbitrary act either. Your claim to a ‘barony’ has a purpose and an ulterior –”
“Please, Mr Holmes. Enough.” Cauchemar made a chopping motion. “I do not wish to regret inviting you and Dr Watson into my lair. I would prefer it if, as a professional courtesy to me, you desisted from prying into my background or motives. That is why I am keeping this mask on. I need to remain anonymous if I am to succeed in my aims. My admiration for you is unbounded, but I have my secrets and I would like them to remain such.”
“Since Watson and I owe you our lives,” Holmes said, “I will respect your request.”
But I recognised on my friend’s face an expression I knew all too well. Holmes had a hawk-like tenacity when confronted with an enigma. He could not rest until he had plumbed its every depth; and the more someone tried to discourage him from doing so, the more relentless his determination grew.
“Might I at least enquire,” he said to Cauchemar, “why you accused Abednego Torrance of being a traitor to his country?”
“Is it not obvious? The man was retrieving a hidden stash of dynamite, clearly with a view to helping perpetrate another bombing atrocity, which, thank God, has at least been prevented.”
“You believe he is a terrorist.”
“On the face of it he would fit the bill. His surname is of Irish origin. It would be easy to take him for a committed Fenian.”
Holmes looked sceptical. “The facts would certainly appear to support that conclusion. Yet it seems out of character for Torrance to espouse a political cause. He is a man who is driven by only one imperative, and that is lining his own pockets.”
“As a matter of fact, I agree,” said Cauchemar. “Torrance is a freelancer, mercenary in every sense. Not only does he supply the terrorists with their dynamite, they employ him to do their work for them.”
“It does strike me,” I said, “that Torrance would conduct a bombing campaign if paid to. He would offer his services to any bidder who came along, regardless of what they asked of him.”
“He is not overburdened with morality,” Holmes agreed. “The fallacy in logic here, though, is assuming in the first place that the bombers are Fenians. There is little conclusive evidence for that. No overt political statements have been made. No Irish nationalists have stepped forward to claim responsibility for the bombings. No one has yet made political capital out of them. The silence from the Home Rule advocates is resounding, and very telling.”
“I concur,” said Cauchemar. “Your conclusions jibe with my own. My mention of Fenianism was a feint.”
Holmes studied the young man with approval, and at last I began to perceive why my friend was so fascinated with this vigilante. They were in many ways alike, both possessed of a powerful brain and a burning desire for justice. Holmes saw a reflection of himself in Cauchemar. He felt an affinity for him. He had found a kindred spirit.
“Do you care to explain that comment?” he said.
“Not really.”
“You know more than you are willing to let on.”
“I have my reasons.”
“You won’t divulge?”
“No.”
“That in itself is illuminating. What a man withholds from saying can be as instructive as what he actually says. I shall try another tack. How did you learn that tonight’s little ‘grave-robbing’ episode was going to occur?”
“I have my sources.” Cauchemar deliberated. “You see, I have the means to tap into – Well, it’s simpler if I show you. Walk this way, gentlemen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE LAW IS AN ASSET
Cauchemar led us to an adjoining chamber, not as large but no less cluttered. If what we had been in was an armoury-cum-workshop, what we were now in was a hub, a centre of operations, a campaign headquarters. Maps of London were tacked to the walls, along with diagrams of the sewers and underground railway lines and rivers and all the other subterranean features of the city. Newspapers lay piled high on the floor, and clippings from them were pinned to display boards. The articles were exclusively devoted to crime and criminals, providing names and pictures of the city’s most notorious villains and the dates and locations of their misdeeds. There were bookcases on which sat Dr Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis and other criminological case studies, alongside bound editions of the Proceedings Of The Old Bailey and The Illustrated Police News. Cauchemar took his vocation seriously, then, pursuing it with the thoroughness of a scholar.
Overhanging the centre of the room was an agglomeration of wires. Dozens of them were gathered in thick sheaves that ran down from the ceiling, drawing together like strands of a web. All of them fed into the back of a large brass teleprinter, which was chattering away diligently, producing coil upon coil of paper tape.
As Holmes’s gaze alighted on this, he let out a small cry of pleasure.
“Oh, this is very clever,” he said, gesturing at the teleprinter. “Bravo, Cauchemar, you cunning fellow. You have, if I’m not mistaken, spliced into London’s telegraphy network and secretly run a wire off each of the principal cables.”
“I have.” Cauchemar sounded both proud and bashful. “I am able to eavesdrop on every single message transmitted along the wires. It is an invaluable resource. Any telegram that gets sent, I automatically receive a copy of it, and no one is any the wiser. Sorting through them is another matter, though. Thousands of these communications zip back and forth each day, more than one man could hope to read and digest. To that end, I have made various adaptations to the teleprinter, guided in part by the tabular-computational principles of Babbage’s difference engine.”
“Elucidate.”
“I have installed a mechanism which is set to recognise the letter-patterns of certain words and phrases – I call them ‘key words’. Most messages pass through the system unremarked and are not printed. Only those containing pertinent or suggestive terms get singled out for me to study. I can even block them from passing on to their destination, if I wish, although I have done that rarely – in fact only once. The machine is like a prospector in the Klondike, sifting through the stream-bed gravel for nuggets of gold.”
“Heavens above,” I said. “No wonder you routinely turn up in your armour as crimes are being committed.”
“Criminals, even the less sophisticated representatives of that species, are known to organise their schemes and recruit accomplices via telegram,” said Holmes. “Scotland Yard also conveys many of its instructions the same way.”
“A valuable source of tip-offs,” said Cauchemar.
“Who knows, if the police were to adopt a similar method of tapping into telegraphy such as you employ, they might increase their preventi
on rate a dozenfold. However, there’s the ethical dimension to that to consider. When does listening in become prying? It could be construed as an invasion of privacy.”
“The police might find a way of putting this technology to use, although I warrant that their intrinsic lack of co-ordination and endless layers of bureaucracy would still hobble them,” said Cauchemar. “The beauty of the way I work is that I can strike exactly when and where I choose, without the hindrance of mobilising a posse of officers and arranging arrest warrants and other practical considerations like that. Also, owing to my mode of transportation, no one knows I’m coming; whereas the average police raid is conducted literally with bells and whistles and may as well be heralded by an engraved calling card and an announcement in the Court and Social pages of the Times.”
Holmes chuckled, amused to find someone whose low opinion of the constabulary’s competence matched his own.
“Some might argue,” I said, “that what you do falls outside the rule of law, Cauchemar, and thus you are no better than the criminals you hurt and intimidate.”
I had meant the remark casually, so as to offer an alternative viewpoint, but Cauchemar found it vexing.
“The law,” he snorted. “Let me tell you about the law, Dr Watson. The law does nothing to protect the rights of individuals when they really need it. The law is there to preserve the fiefdoms of the rich and powerful and give them another stick with which to beat the common man. The law is not ‘an ass’, as the playwright Chapman would have it, but an asset, one of benefit only to those who have the wealth and influence to use it. There is no law in places like the East End. There, people have one basic rule they all abide by, and that is ‘do unto others before they do unto you’.”
“But, for the majority of us, if laws did not exist there would be out-and-out anarchy,” I countered. “We’ve had a taste of that these past few days, with the bombings and the riots, and I for one would not wish to see it become a lasting state of affairs.”
“It’s a comforting illusion, Doctor, to think that the law keeps us safe in our beds at night. It does not. Most people are constrained from committing illegal acts not by some inner morality but by fear of unwelcome consequences. The truth, if only they realised it, is that the police and courts are a blunt, inefficient tool and what little justice they uphold is not nearly enough. For every crime that is cleared up and punished, a hundred others go uninvestigated and unsolved. What I have been doing in the East End has amply proved, by example, the law’s ineffectuality. I am there where the police fear to tread. I am accomplishing what they cannot hope to. I am instilling a true fear of consequences in a section of the populace who until now have been raping and robbing and cozening and killing with impunity.”
Cauchemar had grown quite heated. I must have hit a nerve, to bring forth such an impassioned tirade.
I felt no great urge to mollify him, but in the interests of goodwill I said, “No one could deny that you have made a difference. Just the other day a police inspector of our acquaintance remarked on the substantial drop in the crime rate in that area since you came along.”
“It’s good to know that someone has noted my efforts,” said Cauchemar. “I am striving to bring some decency and order to the beleaguered East End, and to London in general, while at the same time honing my skills and refining my techniques. On that front, if no other, I have reason to be grateful to Abednego Torrance. He by accident discovered a chink in my armour when he shot me a few nights back. There was a vulnerability around the leg pistons which I use to leap around. The metal was necessarily thinner there, at least in my original design, and hence less resistant to gunfire. I have since rebuilt both pistons in reinforced form, using steel that is quenched rather than tempered and has an increased carbon content. The weak point should now have been eliminated.”
“Yes,” said Holmes, “but the sniper who assisted Torrance this evening showed that your armour is still not a perfect defence.”
“What is?” said Cauchemar with a shrug. “Let us put things into perspective, though. Had I not been wearing it, the three of us would not be talking to each other right now – we would all be pushing up the proverbial daisies. An entire church fell on me, and I suffered no more harm than the odd scratch and bruise. That said, I may have to make a few alterations so that next time someone comes at me with an elephant gun, or whatever it was, the impact of the shots won’t be quite so debilitating. Hmmm. Perhaps if there were some way to distribute the force of the bullet across a wider surface area. I could introduce a thin outer layer to absorb and disperse it. But then there’s the additional weight to factor in. Upping the power output of the engine would produce a higher compression rate with the steam, and I’m already at the acceptable limit of tolerance there. But what if I simply increase the size of the micro-furnace pack...?”
Cauchemar lost himself in his musings. He wandered over to a table, on which lay what appeared to be a jumble of machine parts, random odds and ends that had migrated across from the neighbouring room.
I glanced at Holmes, whose attention had reverted to the teleprinter. He was frowning at it, rapt. Then his expression cleared.
“Watson,” he said in a low tone, so as not to be overheard. “I believe we have met the baron before.”
“We have,” I said. “A few nights ago at Shadwell. But I suspect that is not what you mean.”
“Prior even to that.”
“When?”
“When we had a visitor. An unusual-looking one.”
I ransacked my memory. So much had happened during the past week that it felt more like a month. “You mean the scarred delivery boy.”
“Precisely. The rather adult delivery boy, with the egregiously burned face. I know that I am prone to using disguises. So, it would seem, is Cauchemar. The application of wax and panstick can easily mimic fire-damaged skin tissue; I’ve done it myself. Not only did this alter his features and justify why a man his age might be employed delivering telegrams, it was all one could notice when looking at him. It was, in the parlance of stage conjurors, misdirection. One marked little about the man other than his disfigurement.”
“Did you know at the time that it was not real?”
“I had my suspicions. Certainly something about the fellow seemed ‘off’, which was why I entreated you to offer your own opinion of him. The makeup fooled even your experienced medical eye, so I deemed that it must be genuine damage rather than fake. Perhaps I should have placed greater faith in my own judgement.”
“Well, I’m sorry, old chap. I was not in my right mind at the time. I had just undergone a traumatic experience.”
“Oh, I’m not blaming you, Watson. I’m blaming myself. But I see now, with this marvellous machine before me which pirates all the telegraphic communiqués of London and beyond, how Cauchemar must have intercepted Mycroft’s missive to me, donned a delivery boy’s uniform, applied counterfeit scar tissue to his face, and come to Baker Street with it. This is the occasion he referred to, the ‘only once’ when he blocked a telegram. Mycroft’s original never made it to our local telegraph office. It arrived by Cauchemar’s hand instead.”
“But for heaven’s sake, why?” I declared. “For what reason did he go to all that trouble?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
“The answer,” said Cauchemar, “is straightforward.”
He had padded stealthily up behind us while we had been conversing. The chattering of the teleprinter had drowned his footfalls.
“To pay my respects,” he said. “To meet, in person, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes. To see for myself the great lion of detection in his den. To confirm the righteousness of my own mission by entering the presence of someone who, like me, combats crime on his own terms, in parallel to the official authorities.”
“There are far easier ways of achieving the same result,” Holmes said. “You could merely have knocked on my front door. People do, you know, and I receive them in.”
“What is it you are keeping behind your back?” Holmes enquired, with a sudden squint.
Cauchemar did indeed have his hands hidden behind him. I had assumed they were just clasped together there, Cauchemar having adopted a rather formal stance.
He brought his hands to the fore, and in them were a pair of small canisters which he must have fetched from the table of assorted spare parts.
He raised these until they were level with Holmes’s and my faces.
“I truly regret this, gentlemen,” said he. “Were there any other way...”
“Watson!” cried Holmes. “Quick. Cover your –”
But the warning came too late for me, and Holmes himself was a fraction of a second too slow to act.
Cauchemar depressed triggers on the canisters, and two jets of mist sprayed out. The smell of the stuff was sweet, cloyingly so. I recognised it instantly as chloroform, albeit a more pungent variety than I was familiar with.
I was aware of falling, Holmes falling beside me, both of us choking and spluttering. My vision telescoped down to a narrow field. Cauchemar’s masked face loomed over me, framed by a wondrous iridescent corona. His voice came as though echoing down a speaking tube.