A Study in Brimstone Page 10

  Preposterous as it all sounded, you should have heard his chest. He gave me permission to examine him and I was astounded by what I found. His skin was hot and throbbed with an unaccountably powerful and uneven pulse. Though my medical training encompassed no such possibility, I found myself shying to the opposite end of the cab, lest his heart and brain burst in my lap.

  “Anyways, they missed the train,” Hope continued, “and they argued. Leaving my horse, I snuck through the crowd, close enough to hear ’em. Strangerson wanted to go on to another private hotel he knew—Halliday’s—I guess they wasn’t welcome back where they come from. Still, Drebber said he had business back at Charpontier’s. Drebber weren’t too nice to his friend that day, being already rotten with drink. He treated everyone pretty bad, I guess. Strangerson took one cab, Drebber another. I followed Drebber. I guess I hated him more. He went back to Charpontier’s but didn’t stay long. In no time at all, he comes running back out onto the street with a young man at his heels, waving a stick and threat’ning to beat him to death. Well I pulled up my cab to the curb to save him. Funny, but in that moment I wasn’t thinking to kill him, only that I couldn’t let nobody else do it, or I’d lose my chance forever. Wasn’t ’til we were alone in my cab that I realized I finally had him. He hadn’t recognized me. He was jolly as you like; kept taking swigs out of that flask of his and telling me about some pretty girl he’d just been courtin’. He said he was tired out and ordered me to take him some place to sleep.”

  “I drove him round to 3 Lauriston Gardens, what I knew to be vacant. He followed me in, friendly as you like, and complained of the darkness. I lit a candle, held it before my face and said, ‘You know me, Drebber! Who am I?’”

  “He musta thought we were playin’ a game, for he guessed Abraham Lincoln, but when I showed him Lucy’s wrapper, he knew what was comin’. He tried to push past me, but in that moment I had the strength to best a rhino. He tried begging, promised me money, but nothing, nothing was going to stay my hand. I’d come so far… I showed him the pills. I told him, “Now Drebber, you choose. One of ’em is deadly poison; the other ain’t. You choose one now an’ eat it. I’ll eat th’ other and we’ll see if there’s any justice in this world or not!’ I weren’t afraid, for I could feel Lucy with me, smell her sweet dough. Either she would be avenged, or I would join her in the boundless ever-after. Mewlin’ like a baby cat, Drebber chose one and we ate. Then I seen his face tighten up and I knew he’d chose the bad pill. In that moment, I knew myself an instrument of justice. Can’t tell you how good that felt. For a number of years up ’til then, I was afraid I might just be crazy. Felt so good to watch him die. It was only a fraction of the misery he’d caused me an’ Lucy, but it still felt good. I stuffed the wrapper in his mouth and left. I didn’t even realize I’d been bleedin’ ’til then.”

  “No, no, no,” I protested. “You carried that paper across ten years and two continents. Not a day after the murder, you risked capture to retrieve that wrapper from my very hand. Do you expect me to believe you just decided to leave it with Drebber’s corpse?”

  “Thought I wanted to,” he shrugged. “I wanted to make him eat it, wanted it to be the last thing he ever tasted. Only, when I got back to the cab, I felt she was gone. I was alone, you know? First time since Nevada. Even in my madness, I had her there. I could smell her. My Lucy. I had to go back, but that damned cop had already come. I didn’t know what to do, ’til I saw the ad in the paper. I pulled a dress off a clothesline and… heh, heh… I sure fooled you, Doctor!”

  I saw no sense in arguing with the man. “You sure did,” I said.

  “Good thing, too,” he added amiably, “or I’da had ta slice you up!”

  I fell silent. He continued, “Once I had Lucy’s ghost back, I drove round to Halliday’s and began sneakin’ round. I saw Strangerson up there, reading by his window. I went and found a ladder and climbed up to see him. I gave him the same choice I gave Drebber, but he weren’t having none of it. He come at me and I let him have it. I meant to poison him, but I weren’t sad to see him fall to the same knife he took to my Lucy. I left Lucy’s ghost in his mouth too, for I thought I wouldn’t need it no more, then I went outside to explode.”

  “Only you didn’t,” I pointed out, in passive-aggressive defense of actual medicine.

  “I shoulda figured—getting caught and explainin’ myself—story wasn’t over ’til I did that.”

  I shook my head again and reflected, “So… you followed these men for ten years; taught yourself the trades of dock work, lumberjacking, portering, cab-driving; taught yourself Russian, Spanish, German, French and Danish?”

  “Guess I did,” Hope said.

  “That may be the most trouble any human has ever taken over the matter of a crumpet with a hole in it,” I said.

  “The perfect revenge,” Holmes mused.

  “Yeah…” Hope agreed, “only…”

  “Only what?” asked Holmes.

  “Now that I get to thinkin’ on it, I shoulda done Strangerson first,” Mr. Hope said, shaking his head sadly. “Shoulda killed him with that knife, cut him in half, poisoned half his body and told Drebber, ‘I split, so you choose!’ I’da eaten whatever half of the body he didn’t, of course. I’da poisoned the smaller half. Drebber would have taken the smaller half.”

  Horror-struck, I said nothing.

  “That would have been masterful,” said Holmes.

  Hope only nodded and said, “I know it. So… what about that gun? How’d you shoot my cab in half with one pistol shot?”

  “It wasn’t the gun that did the damage, Mr. Hope. I only had Watson fire it for appearances. That way, any neighbors who beheld the action would see what you did: a pistol, apparently loaded with a potent explosive cartridge. That is not the truth, but what else could one assume?”

  “What’s the truth then?”

  Oddly, it was not Jefferson Hope but me that Warlock fixed with his otherworldly green gaze. He sighed. “Moriarty said I should be discovered if I took this case. I realize now, he was speaking of you, Watson. Strange… I have grown accustomed to denying everything. But one of you gentlemen is not long for this world and the other is too close and too observant to be fooled. I wonder, have either of you ever noticed the brimstone thread?”

  “What’s that?” asked Hope.

  “Think of the world as a sheet of cloth, woven on the master loom. There are thousands of threads that make it up, each coming and going in patterns. As you travel through life, you happen upon various threads. There is one for poverty, one for plenty. There is a thread for love, two for lust, several for disappointment, one for balsa wood and, of course, the brimstone thread.”

  Holmes paused until Jefferson Hope said, “I still don’t think you’ve answered my question.”

  “The brimstone thread is an echo. There are powerful things that exist outside our own, comfortable reality. They would like to be here; they are constantly searching for a way in. Thus, they are ever willing to do favors for people in this reality. After all, is one ever truly absent from a place that has felt one’s influence? Do a favor for a millionaire some time and, whenever you remind them of it, you are sure to find yourself treated to a nice meal, if not a new house. They can never be entirely free of their obligation to you. With guilt, I must admit that I am a person whom these outside entities perpetually attend, all clambering to do me favors. I try to avoid accepting them, for with each deed they do for me, they are closer to this world. The brimstone thread shows itself more and more within the cloth. You must have noticed.”

  “I think I have.” Mr. Hope nodded, a faraway look in his eye. “I think I was stuck on that thread for a while. I almost feel a part of it.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Holmes mumbled, but his eyes were on me, not Mr. Hope. When I said nothing, he chided, “Oh come now, Watson. You must have seen it! Why do the zealots of every religion behave in the same way? Whatever their native faith might teach, they always turn hat
e, violence and intolerance against the innocent! Regardless of the god they turn from, why is it always the same one they turn to? Why is any number, raised to the power of zero, equal to one? It doesn’t make sense! It seems otherworldly because it is, but it is so well entrenched in our reality that we can no longer understand our own world without resorting to it. That is the brimstone thread! I know you have seen it, Watson, and I know you to be keen of mind and gifted with great powers of observation. I have hidden the existence of the outer realms from the simpletons who lodged with me previously, but you… Having caught one glimpse, one tattered edge of the thread, a man like you has the capacity to make a scientific analysis of it—a study in brimstone—which I would be powerless to stop, except by killing you or ruining your intellect.”

  “You wouldn’t!” I retorted.

  “No, I wouldn’t! Really, Watson, you are a danger to me—exposure to the unsympathetic world being my keenest fear. But you have no idea what a relief it is not to be lodging with some drooling imbecile who grows slowly more and more frightened of me with each passing day until he finally makes his escape. Why, you even seem to be my better at this crime-solving business.”

  “Preposterous,” I declared.

  “Fact,” insisted Holmes.

  “I know how it can be settled,” said Jefferson Hope. “Which one of you caught me?”

  “He did!” said Holmes and I together.

  “I did not,” I told Hope. “He used his powers.”

  “I wouldn’t!” Holmes protested. “Every time I allow one of those things to do me a favor, I sell them another piece of this world. I betray the entire race of man. I would never use my powers for anything so trivial as the capture of a single murderer!”

  “Ah, so it was my pistol that blew up the coach?” I countered.

  “Well… that hardly counts. That was Azazel smiting something. He loves to smite. Hardly a favor… Better to say, I did him a favor by giving him something to smite.”

  “QED: you used your powers,” I said.

  “Really, Watson, don’t be foolish. It was you who figured out that Mr. Hope here would be a London cab driver with an American accent. All I did was to send the Baker Street Irregulars out looking for such a man. As it happens, there was only one.”

  Mr. Hope nodded his approval and congratulations. I sat stunned. Stunned. It really hadn’t occurred to me before that moment, but I had done it—I had solved the crime. I was so enchanted with the power of Grogsson, the terror of Lestrade, and the mystery of Holmes that I had come to view myself as quite powerless but… in the end…

  I sat speechless the rest of the way to Scotland Yard, whilst Holmes and Hope chatted about demons, pistols, the finer points of cutting men in half, et cetera.

  That is about the end of the matter, except to relate one final event which, I will admit, caused me some sadness. It seems that cardio-cranial narrative-sensitive exploditis is a real condition. The story of his life having run its course, his revenge complete, his capture having illuminated his strange history, Jefferson Hope’s head and heart burst that very night, as he slept in his jail cell. What surprised me most was the sheer power of the explosion. He was hardly more than a husk when they found him. The force was such that it tore the window and door from the stone walls of his cell. There was blood everywhere. Detective Inspector Vladislav Lestrade insisted on handling the investigation personally.

  14

  HOLMES WAS OUT, AS HAD BECOME HIS HABIT. IT WAS A habit I gave him, though quite by accident. In passing one day, I had shown him a penny dreadful that one of the nurses gave me to read during my recovery after my fever. I showed it to him only to recall the woman’s kindness, but Holmes seized it and devoured it with scholarly zeal. For two days thereafter he paced and fretted, wondering why there was so little “real literature” left in the world. When I informed him that the profusion of penny dreadfuls on the streets of London had reached near-epidemic proportions, he seized his coat and ran forth to buy up every one he could find. After reading this initial batch, he developed a regular patrol—visiting every cheap bookseller he could find, waking them at all hours to demand new novels.

  I was glad to have a moment alone. I was deep in my thoughts—some happy, some not, and all of them uncertain. I sat at the dining table, playing with a lead soldier I had purchased the day my ship left port—supposedly for India. His uniform and kit were the perfect mirror of my own, done in a clever hand, down to the minutest detail.

  In recent days, the thing had become a source of some dismay for me. His face was stern, his bearing soldierly, his uniform so straight and perfect that I felt the little leaden man had the better of me. I should have been more like him, by all accounts. It boggled me to think how different my life might have been if I had been listening when Murray shouted “duck”. If not for that bullet and that fever, who would I have become? Would I have extricated myself from thrice-cursed Afghanistan and made my way to Bombay? Would the daily practice of war have hardened me into the stiff-upper-lipped British medical officer my late father had so overtly hoped for?

  Holmes stepped back in about half past ten and uttered what was becoming an ever more customary greeting for him. “This author, Watson! This Mary Bryce! She is some sort of sprite or fairy, you may count on it! I tell you, Eldar blood is in her veins, else how does she write them so exact?”

  I had no heart to talk of fairies. “Holmes, I have something for you,” I said.

  “Oh? And what is that?”

  I held up a single sovereign. “The rent.”

  I suppose I might have been taking my leave of him, settling our account like a gentleman before I went. Yet, I was not and he knew it. With a proper crow of triumph, he sprang across the room, swept the coin into his hands and cried, “Happy day, Watson! Gads, could this morning be better? A proper masterpiece concerning fairies, a Varney Vampire book that will anger Lestrade something wonderful, and now you have decided to stay? Ah! I am glad!”

  “As am I,” I assured him.

  “Well then,” he said, pulling out the chair opposite me and settling into it with a wide grin, “why don’t you look it?”

  I sighed heavily. “As you probably realize, Holmes, I have developed a taste for these adventures you claim are so commonplace to you.”

  “How could you not, Watson? The thrill of the chase, eh?”

  “Indeed. Yet it is unsettling to me. I don’t expect you to understand, Holmes, but I was supposed to be very different than I am and… well… I understand what it was I should have become, but not what I have become. Do you see? I understand medicine. You and all your ‘peculiar’ friends I do not understand at all. In fact, you make me realize that the world—which I thought I knew so well—is a wider, wilder, scarier place than I had thought. I can’t figure out where I stand. Who am I? What are you? And how is this situation even to be maintained, for in spite of the lure of it all, I don’t see how all this intrigue earns us a single penny.”

  Holmes’s mouth spread into a sympathetic grin. He reached over to give my wrist a reassuring shake and said, “Perhaps I may help. You are John Watson: a man of worth, possessed of a sharp mind and a true heart. As for the last two points…”

  He swept the lead soldier from the table and regarded it for a moment. His features turned suddenly whimsical and sad. He cupped the soldier between his hands so I could not see it and continued, “Have you ever heard of the alchemists, Watson? Suppose one of those poor fellows had succeeded. Picture the unlucky fool who finally learned to turn base metal into gold, only to find that in the same moment, he had turned his own, golden self into… something base.”

  He uncapped his hands and I gave a little cry of surprise, for from them issued a gout of sulfurous smoke and a surprising quantity of blood. I recoiled. I saw no wound upon his hands and his face registered no pain. Instead, he stood up resolutely and gave me a wan smile. “Welcome to the fight, Watson. We’re all very glad to have you on our side.”

>   He rose, leaving me to gawk and stare. There, in the middle of the table, dewed in blood and reeking of brimstone, stood my little soldier—once of simple dross, now gleaming gold.

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE RESIDENT SACRIFICE

  JUST AFTER LUNCHEON, ON A QUIET TUESDAY AFTERNOON, I said, “No, Holmes; Robert E. Lee was not a demon.”

  Holmes stared at me, mouth agape.

  “That is what you were thinking, is it not? Well, it is incorrect; he was a gifted general—that is all.”

  “But, Watson,” Holmes gasped, “I said nothing! Nothing! You have read my mind!”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “But you did! For that indeed was my last thought!”

  I sighed, folded the front section of The Times into my lap and said, “Holmes, you know better than that. Simple observation has revealed your thoughts to me and—if you are going to persist in explaining away your demonic insights as detective work—I think you had better take the trouble to learn how to correctly observe and deduce.”

  “Do you expect me to believe your little parlor trick affords insight into another man’s inner thoughts?” Holmes scoffed. “To that, I say a loud, abrupt ‘pshaw.’”

  “Holmes…”

  “Pshaw!”

  “Holmes! Let me detail my observations for you; perhaps you will begin to understand. First, I noticed you reading the featured article in my military history magazine, in which Lord Huffington sings the praises of General Lee’s martial prowess.”

  Holmes nodded that this much was correct.

  “You then ran to the bookshelf and picked up a volume of poetry by Stephen Crane, the newspaper correspondent who turned to apocalyptic poetry when he was sent to report on the war. It may be the darkest verse the hand of man has ever put to paper and I wish you wouldn’t read it, for I fear it gives you ideas.”