Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  “Hold him, Holmes, he’s having a seizure.”

  But no amount of holding the lad down was going to save him. I was looking in his face when his eyes filled with blood. His neck muscles strained one last time and his mouth gaped. I thought he might scream, but no sound came. He fell back, head hitting the boards of the stage with a sickening soft thud. I checked to make sure, but I already knew there would be no pulse. The lad was dead.

  “Come, Watson,” Holmes said softly, taking me by the arm. “We can do no more here.”

  I shrugged him away. “We cannot just leave him lying here,” I said. “It’s not right.”

  “There is little right about this case, old friend,” Holmes said. “All we can do is ensure that someone who will look after him finds him first. We shall make an anonymous report to the Yard later. But for now we must go. Moriarty knows we are here—there might be more gunmen where this lad came from.”

  I allowed him to lead me out into the street, and I followed him at a steady pace as we headed back to Baker Street. All the way, the lad’s dead, blood-filled eyes stared at me in my mind’s eye.

  It was only once we were back in the apartments and settled by the fire with a snifter and a pipe that Holmes talked about the events of the night.

  “We are getting somewhere, Watson,” he said after getting his own pipe lit. “Moriarty would not warn us off unless it were so. And it is indicative of something that he has not informed the police that we are back in London, for if he had, I have no doubt Lestrade would be here already to carry out the promises that were made in Comrie. No … we are getting somewhere.”

  “Did you learn anything of import in the bar?” I asked.

  “It was a tortuous process,” he started. “But, yes, I was eventually able to tease out a thread of narrative from the three men who, in case you had not already surmised it, were MacAllans by descent, although rather far removed from the original strain; too far indeed to be under Moriarty’s influence directly.

  “But I am getting ahead of myself, in much the same way as the three in the bar tended to. I shall attempt to summarize for you, Watson, but please, be patient with me, for I had a great deal of information to process, some of it contradictory in nature.

  “The MacAllans’ tale begins in the early nineties. Of course it begins much earlier than that, with Seton himself, but we shall skip over that, for you already know as much as you need to at the moment about the deeper history. We start in the East End, with a family of itinerant laborers, small-time thieves, and opportunists. As far as I can gather they are rather a large clan now, but some of them are considered more influential than others are, being able to claim direct descent from the auld country stock. They are a tight-knit bunch by nature, as are many of their type in the East End, and do not take easily to prying questions from strangers. But sometime in early ninety-one, one such stranger appeared with enough money to loosen tongues. I suspect that man to have been Moriarty himself, these encounters taking place in the months immediately preceding our encounter at the Falls.

  “The man was particularly interested in genealogy, and proved able to spend rather large sums of money to be informed of family histories. It was not much later that the family members started to suffer what they call the sleeping lurgy. By now you will recognize the symptoms—an unconscious state, the mouthing of words, and the memory lapse on awakening. Many of the family were struck in this manner over a period of some weeks.

  “But it is what happened next that most concerns us,” Holmes said gravely. “In May of that year, a number of members of the family walked out of the East End and have not been seen again, beyond rumored sightings in the City just these past few months. You see what this means, of course?”

  And of course I was almost as much in the dark as I had been at the start of his tale, before it hit me.

  “You think Moriarty is somehow using the bodies of these missing people to travel around town?”

  Holmes nodded. “My fear is that by using them as vehicles he has been able to travel and undertake his nefarious plans, all in complete anonymity. I believe he has been working under my very nose all this time without giving a hint of his presence until now. The mere fact that he chose to set a trap for us at this juncture tells me that his plans must be close to fruition. Coupled with another attempt on us this very night, it means that we must work fast, Watson; time may be short. Get some sleep tonight, for tomorrow we must seek out the missing MacAllans.”

  3

  Finding the missing men proved to be easier said than done. We spent a most frustrating week clad in a variety of disguises, walking the length and breadth of the East End in search of any mention of the MacAllan family. It was only when our search took us toward Wapping that we started to hear stories. Our first intimation came over lunch in the Prospect of Whitby. It was a bar that Holmes and I had previously visited several times on cases, and now I worried that our disguises would not pass muster, but we were mostly ignored as we supped some particularly fine ale. We fell into conversation with two fish merchants at the bar.

  I sat in silence, watching Holmes work. I continue to be amazed by his ability to blend seamlessly with the character he is portraying and converse at an equal level with any of London’s social strata. After spending a quarter of an hour relating a completely fictitious but gripping account of a trip across the Channel in a gale, he had the men eating out of his hand. During the next hour we got our first hints of the criminal activities of Sad-Eye Joe MacAllan, active in these parts but only having risen to prominence in recent times. The way the man was described, Irish, fiery and quick-witted, but with a strange tendency to drift into lapses of forgetfulness, had me convinced we were indeed on to something with this line of enquiry.

  Holmes obviously thought the same. He subtly but firmly quizzed the men and teased out a thread of criminal actions ranging from petty theft to grand larceny, all of which involved Sad-Eye Joe and a small clan of family members. None of the family were ever seen together, and all seemed to suffer sudden bouts of the sleeping sickness. The fishermen had not heard whether Joe was plotting anything in particular.

  “But it wouldna surprise me,” the elder of the fishermen said. “When somebody suddenly gets ambitious later in life like that, who knows what can happen?”

  Neither of the fishermen could say exactly where we might find any of these MacAllans; only that they were usually around. But Holmes had a smile on his face when we finally parted company with the men at the bar. We took our ales out onto the small balcony that overlooked the river and lit up smokes. Holmes made sure there was no one in hearing range before speaking.

  “My hunch was right, Watson. Find this family, and we shall have gone a long way toward uncovering Moriarty’s plot.”

  I knew the signs. Holmes now had but a single focus and, like a terrier with a rat, would not let go until the job was done.

  3

  For the next three days I followed him around some of the most miserable parts of the city I have ever had the misfortune to visit. We listened to tall tales and eyewitness accounts where the sleeping sickness was attributed to witchcraft, poison, and even the work of old Hob himself. Holmes filed each tale away in its appropriate compartment in that regimented mind of his and moved on. We followed an inward-tending spiral, deep into the heart of the East End, each night hearing more and more about the exploits, mostly criminal in nature, of Sad-Eye Joe. And each morning, as we tried to gain some rest back in Baker Street, Holmes sat in the chair by the fire, smoking his favorite meerschaum and staring into space, so still that an observer might have thought that he himself was suffering from the very malady we were investigating.

  Finally on the fourth evening we made a breakthrough, learning of an address in Shoreditch where three of the MacAllan family members had been seen entering. We arrived in the area at dusk and spent a long hour watching for any sign of activity, none of which was forthcoming. The building itself was a three-story sand
stone dwelling, turned black with smoke and soot. It looked like it might at one time have been a warehouse, as there were many such similar buildings in the area, but this one had been converted into a warren of small apartments, cheap housing for poorly paid workers in the local markets. Most of the windows showed no light at all. A single candle flickered on the second floor, but no shadows moved in the room beyond the whole time we were there. Finally Holmes could contain himself no longer.

  “Come, Watson,” he said. “Let us see if tonight is the night we can force him into a confrontation.”

  I followed him across the street to the doorway. He rapped hard on the door. There was no reply, no sign of movement at all from inside. I made to turn away, but Holmes had other ideas. He turned the handle and put his shoulder to the door. It gave way before him with a loud crack that echoed around the street. I had a quick look round before following Holmes inside; no one seemed to be paying us any attention, and no one shot at me, which I took as a good sign.

  Holmes hushed me to be quiet as soon as we entered a long narrow hallway. Unlike the hallway in Seton’s keep in Comrie, this place felt somehow alive. The hairs at the nape of my neck rose, and I was immediately on the defensive. The atmosphere was stifling; hot and sultry, reminding me strangely of monsoon season in northern India. Some light found its way in from the street outside, but further inside the dwelling everything was dark and quiet. I was immediately reminded of the events in the Effingham Theatre.

  “Is this wise, old chap?” I whispered. The sibilant sounds echoed around us, whistling like wind under an ill-fitting door. Holmes hushed me to silence once more. We padded softly through a series of empty rooms on the ground floor. There was some evidence of recent occupation, but no one had either lit a fire or prepared food there for several days at least. I was starting to think we were on a fool’s errand as we climbed the stairs to the first floor.

  It was darker here, and the shadows seemed to run around the rooms without any discernible light source to drive them. Or maybe it was just my imagination; this case had certainly awoken a superstitious corner of my mind I had thought left behind in childhood. When we reached a door and heard heavy breathing coming from beyond, the scared boy I had been did not seem very far away at all.

  Holmes had no such qualms. He moved quietly into the room and was soon lost from sight in the dark. Several seconds passed, with no change in the timbre or intensity of the breathing. It sounded like a small group of people, all of them asleep. Even before Holmes called me inside with a stage whisper I knew what I was going to encounter.

  Chapter 5

  EF

  It was only a small room, some ten feet square, but somehow twelve people had managed to find space to sleep in swaddled bundles on the floor, so closely packed that I had to carefully pick my way between them.

  Of course I say sleeping, but these prone figures proved, to a man, to be in the same almost-cataleptic state I was coming to recognize, with all of the same symptoms save one. There was no mouth movement apparent, no attempts at forming words. They just lay there, eyes open, staring vacantly into space. The air felt heavier here, stale food mixed with body odor and the rank, acrid stench of clothes worn far too long without washing. I had to cover my mouth with a handkerchief when kneeling to inspect the bodies; that is how I thought of them, for any semblance of personality was completely absent. They were all of them male, with ages ranging from the late teens to forty at a guess, but there was no sign of the one we had heard described as Sad-Eye Joe.

  After a few minutes Holmes motioned that we should leave the room. I was glad to agree. We went out onto the upstairs landing where the air was less foul.

  “This cannot be, Holmes,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Surely even Moriarty can only control one other man at a time?”

  Holmes looked grave. “There is much about this case that goes against sense, Watson,” he said. “But I fear this is even worse than I imagined. I think that these poor wretches here are completely lost; their essence, their souls if you like, having moved on, or been forced on, leaving only the husks behind for the puppeteer to play with at his whim.”

  It took me several seconds to come to terms with what Holmes had said, so far was it from my normal frame of reference as a medical practitioner.

  “If that is true, then it is monstrous,” I said, and I am afraid that, in my anger, I allowed my voice to rise far beyond the whispers we had been conversing in. A loud moan answered me from the dark room.

  Holmes took me by the arm and led me further from the doorway. “We must keep our presence here quiet,” he said softly. “If Moriarty knows we have been here, then the game is up. But on the other hand, if we can observe, and follow these poor souls about any business he might have them do, then we can crack this case and bring it to resolution.”

  The very thought appalled me; I would have told Holmes so in no uncertain manner, but he was already making his way back downstairs, and I was loath to spend more time than was necessary standing alone there in the dark. I followed, taking care to tread lightly, listening at every step for any sign that someone might wake. But I reached the front door with no further mishap.

  Holmes was on the doorstep waiting. “We shall need to work in shifts,” he said. “I cannot trust this to anyone else outside you and myself. We shall find a room overlooking this spot, keep watch for anyone entering, and follow anyone that leaves. Agreed?”

  “I am more inclined to call in the authorities,” I said. “We could, after all, be dealing with some disease with which I am not familiar?”

  Holmes snorted impatiently. “Rubbish, Watson, and you know it. You have seen enough already to know exactly who is behind this. Will you help me catch him, or must I do this alone?”

  Of course, when he put it like that, I could not refuse him.

  That same evening we took a room opposite the building, making sure we got a spot where we could watch the comings and goings without being observed ourselves.

  It was to be a longer vigil than either of us had imagined.

  3

  By the end of the second day, boredom had set in. We took turns sleeping in the saggy bed that dominated one whole side of the room while the other sat by the window and watched for any sign of activity. Between us we got through a prodigious amount of tobacco, and Mrs. Hudson had made three trips already to deliver hampers of food to sustain us. Still, time dragged somewhat, more so when either of us was asleep, or when the black mood took Holmes and he went quiet.

  As an old soldier I was used to long periods of inactivity between bursts of action, but the tedium of it got to Holmes and eventually he started to fret.

  “I may have misjudged the situation, Watson,” he said for maybe the fourth time in as many hours. “We should be out looking for Sad-Eye Joe, not cooped up in here watching over the half-dead.”

  I will admit there had been times over the last few hours where I would have agreed with him wholeheartedly, but in my mind’s eye I kept seeing the dead lad on the stage in the Effingham. I was not yet ready to abandon these others to a similar fate if it could be avoided.

  It was almost dark again, but we had decided not to show any light from our room in case our presence was noted. So it came to be that I was sitting in the dark on the corner of the bed, smoking yet another pipe of tobacco. I looked up when Holmes pulled the thin curtain aside to better see down into the street. I moved to his side and stared down. There was just enough light from the recently lit gas lamps to see what was happening below. Someone had just come out of the house across the road, a stooped figure heavily wrapped in several layers of clothes. A makeshift hood had been pulled over the head, obscuring the face, but from the general build I surmised this to be one of the younger men I had examined in the room. Quite how they survived for so long in that state I was completely unable to comprehend, and I had never expected to see any of them alive again, never mind out on the street and walking around.

  “Fina
lly,” Holmes said. “Some action. Stay here, Watson. I will follow our man. You must watch in case anything else happens. I will return as quickly as I can.”

  With that, I was left alone in the dark room with only my pipe for company.

  The night passed slowly, made even more tedious by Holmes’ absence. I had to open the window and let some fresh air in, for the stuffy heat threatened to send me asleep. Even then I was hard pushed to keep my eyes open. As the night wore on and there was no activity forthcoming I found my mind wandering, turning over aspects of the case. I always returned to that single image I could not seem to let go, of the dead lad in the theatre, and the blood-filled eyes staring up at me.

  Some time later I came awake with a start, immediately annoyed that I had let myself down—let Holmes down. On looking into the street I saw that I had roused myself just in time. A swaddled figure crossed the street from somewhere below me and went into the building opposite. At first I thought it was Holmes himself, for there was something about the bearing that I recognized, but this was a stockier, shorter man than my friend.

  I wondered whether it was another member of the MacAllan clan, possibly even one flushed out by whatever Holmes was up to. But this newcomer’s intent was much more sinister, and rapidly became clear when, only seconds after he entered the building, one of the upstairs windows smashed, sending a tinkle of glass down to the cobbles. Red-and-yellow flames immediately showed, lapping around the window frame.

  Someone intended to burn the unconscious men.