Associates of Sherlock Holmes

by George Mann

  “Only this: that you wish, do you not, to stay? Here in Bloomsbury? That there are depths for you to plumb? Blank spaces on the map still to be charted? Fabulous, fertile islands to be colonised and made your own?”

  I swallowed deep and hard at this but made the inevitable protestation. “I am old, my dear, simply too old and too weak.”

  “Truly,” she said, “it is not so. You are familiar, I know, with the contents of this box?”

  I craned my neck forward to see what lay within, although I do believe I already knew what I would find there.

  A set of full phials. A hypodermic already prepared.

  The lady’s voice was gentle but firm. “I have continued my father’s work. The serum has been intensified and improved. You would surely appreciate the artistry of the thing. You will reap – oh, shall you reap – such benefits.”

  “The side effects,” I stuttered. “The things before, the things it made me do…”

  “All gone now. It has been improved upon. There is nothing that this could make you do that you did not wish to do. The serum would be to you a tyrant no longer but rather a most willing and most biddable accomplice.”

  “I… dare not…”

  “You?” Scheherazade opened her eyes improbably wide, in near-pantomimic shock. “How could you of all people use such a word? I thought you fearless, Professor. Fearless!”

  I bowed my head to demonstrate that I felt appropriately shamed.

  “Please,” she said. “This is my present to you. My final gift. And so I ask once more, Professor Presbury, sir, will you take this serum?”

  And, of course, I nodded and I said that I would, and I reached out for the tools of vigour and strength and newfound youth. And I have begun – so I happily suppose – the final tranche of this, my most pleasurable damnation.

  Telegram

  Sent: 9th January 1913

  From: Scheherazade

  To: Panjandrum

  Study proceeds apace. Subject a willing participant. Earliest results expected within hours.

  From the Pall Mall Gazette, 10th January 1913

  A CURIOUS DISTURBANCE ON DEAN STREET

  It is often said, at least by certain worthies, that it is the youth of our present time to whom we must look for demonstrations of dissolute and impious behaviour. The events that took place last night towards the southernmost end of Dean Street would seem to stand in ironical rebuke of so conventional a suggestion.

  Shortly after midnight besides a nest of lodging-houses of the most disagreeable sort, a minor conflagration was seen to begin, as well as a great deal of commotion. In particular, a flurry of coarse and violent language was heard from he who was subsequently found to be the source of the blaze, a gentleman who was also in pursuit of a very young woman, busily engaged in chasing her along the avenue. The scene was said to resemble some antique woodcutting or portrait from some latter-day Rake’s Progress.

  Bystanders reported this noisy malefactor to be crouched over and almost barking in the manner of an animal. It was to considerable surprise, when the culprit was eventually run to ground, that the gentleman in question was discovered to be aged indeed, more than seventy and at least the threefold senior of his young quarry. Police were summoned (here we may imagine the disquiet of several present) and the amateur arsonist arrested. In such unexpected ways are the commonplace assumptions of our society upended and overturned.

  Telegram

  Sent: 10th January 1913

  From: Panjandrum

  To: Detective Inspector Arnold Blakely, Scotland Yard

  Understand you have our man Presbury in custody. Professor part of larger design. Please release forthwith without charge. Your brother on the square, Panjandrum

  Correspondence of the Bostonian Hotel

  12th January 1913

  Dear Professor Presbury,

  I regret to inform you that certain recent conduct upon your part has been brought to our attention and that, in consequence, we must request your departure from this establishment by six o’clock tomorrow. You will understand that we have the reputation of this hotel to consider at all times and we cannot be seen to indulge or tolerate (let alone condone) such behaviour.

  I understand, sir that you were once a gentleman and so I should be most grateful for your total and discreet acquiescence in this matter.

  Yours, with regret,

  I.A. Richards, Manager

  From the private journal of Professor C.R.H. Presbury

  13th January 1913

  There is much of the past few days which is now to me both murky and obscure. There are in that time elements which possess a quality of the oneiric, and others which I believe I can see in the crisp, cold light of day, to have been largely shameful. There is much that I have no desire to record here. That peculiar and unexpected incident which has just occurred, however, I surely have no choice but to set down.

  Following a most unsatisfactory interview with the wearingly small-minded manager of this otherwise pleasant hotel in which he refused altogether to weaken his resolve or to consider any alternative course of action than that to which he is committed, I returned to my room in order to pack together my belongings and so prepare for my departure.

  When I opened the door, however, it was to discover within a gentleman sat upon a chair, observing my entry with a look of something like watchful disapproval. We had met on only a handful of occasions, a decade past, during a period of my life much befogged and dimmed, yet did I recognise him at once, for this man’s fame precedes him as a mourner goes before a hearse.

  As I crossed the floor he rose to his feet and extended his right hand. With his left, he smoothed his moustache, a brisk gesture which nonetheless, at least to the trained eye, betokened anxiety and even mild disquiet.

  “Dr Watson?” I said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “You remember me, then?” His voice was full of that bullish determination to state the obvious which typifies the military mind.

  “How could I not?” I replied. “After you and Mr Holmes took so great and uninvited an interest in my affairs?”

  “A wholly neutral observer,” began the doctor, “might rather be inclined to suggest that the encounter to which you allude ended with our saving your life.”

  “That may be so,” I replied with a forbearance that was, I think, something of a marvel. “Yet our acquaintanceship was a fleeting thing. Might I ask how you have found me and what is the nature of your business here?”

  “Locating you, Professor, has not been difficult. One had merely to follow the trail of destruction that you have left in your wake. And as for the nature of my business, let me be quite clear. It is an intervention born of concern and of fellow human feeling. I have come here today to deliver a warning.”

  At these words I felt a distinct surge of anger. “Whatever do you mean by such impertinence? Whatever is this absurd warning of yours?”

  “I should close the door, Professor,” said he, “and sit before me. We do not have much time and the words I have to say to you now are of the most sensitive and significant kind. Indeed, if you pay proper heed to them, they will yet save your life.”

  “Do you take me for a fool, sir?” I began and felt myself ready to tumble again into a paroxysm of righteous rage.

  Yet Watson interrupted – “Professor!” – and I saw in his eyes not only absolute sincerity but also (and it was this which persuaded me to stay my words and, almost meekly, obey) something very close to fear.

  So it was that I found myself doing as I had been asked and sitting opposite this unwanted visitor as that old storyteller began to speak.

  “Let it first be noted that I am here today not on my own behalf but as an emissary from Mr Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes,” I breathed, perhaps more in the manner of a villain from the popular stage than I had intended. “It was my understanding that that jackanapes – that meddler-in-chief – had retired. That he drowses now by some
Sussex fireside.”

  “Your understanding, at least in regards to my friend’s retirement, is correct. Nonetheless…” At this, a smile of an uncharacteristically knowing, even sly, nature crossed my visitor’s face. “It is not Mr Sherlock Holmes who has sent me to speak to you today.”

  “No?”

  “Rather, I am present on behalf of an equally noble man: Mr Mycroft Holmes.”

  I rummaged for a moment through that portion of my mental apparatus that is devoted to trivia before retrieving the necessary fragment of data. “The elder brother, yes? He who is reputed to dwell in the upper reaches of government?”

  “Quite so,” said Watson. “Though I fear he is not now nearly as close to the centre of things as once he was. We are none of us – are we – quite as at home in this new century as we were in the last? We are all of us, I think, essentially Victorian.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, adopting a pleasingly lofty tone such as I had for many years deployed in the faces of students too unwavering in their convictions, “it is my greatest regret that I was not born very much later. This new age of abandon suits me so very much more nicely than did those stultifying decades in which you thrived.”

  “I confess myself surprised, sir, given the unmanly excesses of your biography, that the simple accident of your birthday should prove now to be the greatest of your regrets.”

  I glared. “You spoke, I believe, of a warning.”

  “I did.”

  “Then pray deliver it. My courtesy is not without limit.”

  My guest looked at this as though he intended to issue a rejoinder. In the event, he contented himself with the following, rather lugubrious words: “Mycroft cannot be seen to act in this matter. Therefore he must do so at one remove.”

  “You are his cat’s paw?”

  “Surely something a trifle more benign than that. Nonetheless he wished me to convey to you the extreme danger of your predicament.”

  “I am in no danger, sir. My situation is surely the reverse of that state.”

  “Professor, nothing is what it seems. The lady whom you know as Lowenstein has no true claim upon the name. Rather she is an agent of the War Office. She is employed as a singular agent for those extraordinary projects which have, given the present European situation, been granted tacit authority.”

  I shook my head at the absurdity of it all. “You have spent too long in the pages of your own books. Such things do not happen in real life. Why should the lady lie to me in so bald a fashion? What possible interest would that office have in me? Besides, I find your pessimism concerning our continental relations to be positively dispiriting.”

  “As matters stand, sir, there would seem to be little alternative to conflict before long. And as to the matter of the War Office’s interest in you – an office, might I add, against whose methods Mycroft stands vehemently opposed – why, surely that is obvious.”

  “It is not obvious to me.”

  “The serum, Professor. The serum! Do you not see its potential?”

  “For the lending of additional vigour, perhaps, in elder males…”

  “No, sir! Do you not see its possible military application?”

  I gaped at the man for this wild flight of fancy. Yet was he persistent.

  “Do you not see? They are experimenting upon you! They are testing your endurance, testing the effects of this new substance upon the only man in Europe to have regularly imbibed the drug. Imagine it, Professor. Imagine the scene. Battlefields swarming with soldiers who are more than human. More feral, more savage, more lethal than their Teutonic counterparts. Legions, sir! Legions upon legions of creeping men!”

  With this barrage of lurid melodrama, the doctor had at last gone too far. I rose to my feet and said, with all necessary sombreness: “this, sir, is now intolerable. You do me and Miss Lowenstein a grave disservice.”

  “Professor, I speak only the truth.”

  “You speak slander and, I fancy, something very near to treason. Now, you have delivered your warning. I should ask you now to leave. Under normal circumstances I would request also that you bear my felicitations to your master, Mr Mycroft Holmes, yet so unworthy has been your conduct and so vile have been your insinuations, I cannot find it in my heart to do so. Dr Watson, sir, it is high time for you to depart.”

  The old doctor stood up, looked sorrowfully at me, smoothed his moustache once again in that distinctive gesture and walked, slowly and wordlessly, towards the door. Once there, he turned back.

  “As a scientist, Professor, you will know well what the next and final stage of their unnatural experiment will surely be.”

  “And what, sir, is that?”

  “They will test a thing to its very limits. To the point of its destruction. And beyond.”

  I scowled in disbelief at the continuance of such folly.

  “Good day, Professor Presbury. I should recommend immediate flight yet I fear you are now deaf to reason. Instead, I shall have to content myself merely by wishing you the very best of luck.”

  And then he turned once more and he was gone, back to his dreams of the past, to wish himself resident again in that vanished epoch of gaslight and hansom cab.

  Although certain of his more pungent fantasies have, naturally enough, lingered in my imagination, I have pushed the great majority of them aside. For I am quite certain that there can be no truth in any of it. Indeed, I am to see Scheherazade later today and to her I shall say nothing at all of this queer visitation. She will, I am certain, secure for me alternative accommodation and she has promised to take me once again upon the town. That she will have supplies about her person is to be expected.

  Only pleasure lies before me now. I cannot – I will not – believe anything else. The story of the rest of my life will be one of pleasure and delight, of excess and of deep, dark, trembling joy.

  From The Pall Mall Gazette, 27th January 1913

  A GRISLY DISCOVERY;

  CIRCUS OWNERS QUESTIONED

  It is a tragic fact that such discoveries as the one that was made in the early hours of this morning by the banks of the Thames in the vicinity of Waterloo are commonplace. A body was found, which appeared at first sight to be that of an elderly gentleman – another victim, it was thought, of old age, want, despair and that illusory comfort which is surely suggested to the desperate by the deep cold waters of our great river. Further inspection, however, revealed a more curious element to this seemingly well-worn tale.

  The deceased was profoundly deformed, bent almost double even in death and possessing great and unnatural quantities of hair, as of those sported by certain simian denizens of the animal kingdom. That there is something freakish and abnormal in the business surely lies beyond all reasonable doubt, and the discovery of this ill-fated “Monkey Man” has already excited all manner of speculation.

  Detective Inspector Arnold Blakeley, who is investigating the mystery on behalf of Scotland Yard, professed to this correspondent that his investigation is in its earliest stages. He considers the likeliest suspects to be found in the worlds of the circus and the carnival. It is in these disreputable quarters, he says, that all his energies shall be expended and he is confident that a plausible solution shall in time emerge.

  Telegram

  Sent: 30th January 1913

  From: Mycroft Holmes

  To: Panjandrum

  Noted with interest thorough failure of your Presbury project. I expect to learn shortly of its total cessation.

  Telegram

  Sent: 30th January 1913

  From: Panjandrum

  To: Mycroft Holmes

  Expectation unfounded. New alternatives soon to be explored. Suggest you consider retirement at earliest possible opportunity.

  Telegram

  Sent: 30th January 1913

  From: Mycroft Holmes

  To: Panjandrum

  Retirement impossible while such men as you defame good name of Empire.

  Telegram

&
nbsp; Sent: 30th January 1913

  From: Panjandrum

  To: Mycroft Holmes

  Not defamation; rather necessary protection. Project ongoing. Will brook no opposition.

  Telegram

  Sent: 30th January 1913

  From: Mycroft Holmes

  To: Panjandrum

  Useful phrase, much used by younger brother: Game is afoot.

  A FLASH IN THE PAN

  William Meikle

  Shinwell “Porky” Johnson is a former criminal who appears in “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”, in which he protects Kitty from Baron Grüner’s henchmen and provides Holmes information on the best way to get into Grüner’s secure residence. He is muscle for hire, and when I was asked to write for this anthology, the image of him standing at the door of a music hall as Holmes and Watson ascended the steps came to me almost immediately – from there the story came to me all at once, and I had a lot of fun writing it.

  —William Meikle

  They call me Porky Shinwell around town on account of me carrying a bit too much meat on my bones – at least most people do. But there is one gentleman that doesn’t – one that has always treated me as if I mattered, and I shall never forget that kindness. I was at the door, making sure no undesirables got inside, and it had been a while since I had seen him, so I almost didn’t recognise him in his tall hat and frock coat. I had only ever met him on the job before, but it was him right enough – Mr Sherlock Holmes himself, coming up the steps to the Gaiety Theatre for the evening show, with the doctor at his side.

  “Mr Johnson,” he said. “It is good to see you in gainful employment for a change. And I note you have been following Watson’s advice. A bit more lime in the mixture though – you will see better colour in your gums.”

  Holmes was the main reason I decided to go straight several years back. Having seen how he could just look at a man and see the history of his misdeeds writ large, I knew that I would never feel safe on a job after that – the old nerves would not take it. And here he was, at it again – how in blazes he could tell from where he was stood what manner of antiscorbutic I had been using for the scurvy I shall never know. But, damn him to hell, he was right. Mr Sherlock Holmes is always right, even when you think he is wrong.