Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual Page 11

  When she and her awful butler at last departed, I sank wearily back into my chair and let my mind parse the whirlwind morning. My wit flittered between the mesmerized minister; the beautiful, wonderful Lady Hilda; the not-so-beautiful-or-wonderful Lady Hilda; Moriarty; the threat to my own person; and the horrible sauce-murder of Eduardo Lucas. All was shrouded and uncertain; there was only one thing I knew for sure.

  “The second one. That was the real Lady Hilda.”

  “Indubitably,” said Holmes.

  “Did you see how angry she was? How improprietous she found it that such things should happen to a person of her station? That’s the real duke’s daughter, if ever there was one.”

  Holmes nodded sagely. “And when I noted that she, too, was a posh bit of crumpet, her butler slapped me.”

  “As well he should, Holmes. As well he should.”

  “It’s a pity,” Warlock sighed. “I much preferred the first lady, you know. I wish she was the real one.”

  “Precisely! It’s as if she knew just what we’d want Lady Hilda to be and then she became that person, to deceive us. She’s played her game like a true master, Holmes. She fooled us before she’d even met us. But why? And how? How did she know so much about the rune? About Lady Hilda’s indiscretion and Lucas’s involvement? Why did she come to us at all? What does she want? Is she after the rune, or sabotaging the prime minister, or the real Lady Hilda or—”

  “And why did she shoot Milverton?” Holmes interjected.

  “Exactly! Why did she… Eh? What are you talking about, Holmes?”

  “Remember? About a year ago, when she dressed up as an Irish servant girl and murdered Charles Augustus Milverton while we were hiding behind the curtains? Why did she do that?”

  Realization can take many forms. Some say it is a flash—the touch of divinity in the mortal mind. Some say it is like beholding a thousand scattered puzzle pieces and knowing, in your heart, the picture they will make as they unite.

  Personally, I just got a headache. Knowledge and cranial pain flooded over me at the same instant; the onset was so sudden and so severe, I swear I lost the vision in my right eye. I roared with rage, though whether I was angry at her for tricking me, Holmes for holding his tongue until then, or myself for being such a dupe, I could not say.

  “Holmes! Why didn’t you…? When did you know?”

  “Oh, I just thought of it. Just now. It was her eyes, I think.”

  Yes. It was. I should have seen it myself. There had been a few other clues—her size, the slope of her jaw—but the real clue was those piercing green eyes. Gone was the splatter of freckles she’d had that first night, the dizzying blast of red hair and the scared, subservient manner, but the eyes were the same. They’d been five feet from my own, looking right at me. If only I’d looked back. If only I’d paid attention to the truth of those eyes, instead of the lure of her story, they would surely have betrayed her to me.

  “She’s a formidable person,” Holmes continued. “I’m a little bit afraid of her, Watson, and I don’t mind admitting it. She’s pretty good at fooling people. And pretty good at killing them, too. She shot Milverton. Almost shot you, by your own account. Killed Lucas too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “But why? How? It doesn’t make any…”

  But it did make sense. Perfect sense. After all, how many people had even known about the Moriarty Rune? Milverton had seen it, perhaps, but he’d died a moment later. Holmes had surely seen it, but had been stricken insensible. I’d seen it. The murderess had, too. Somehow, the rune seemed to have gotten out of Holmes and made the acquaintance of Holdhurst, Bellinger, Hope and Lucas. Now two of them were reduced to helpless imbecility and the other two were *ahem* in the South of France. Thus, outside that sitting room at 221B Baker Street, I could name only one capable person who surely knew of the Moriarty Rune. Well… I suppose I could not name her. Merely label her.

  The Woman.

  What a foe! I had let the Moriarty Rune slip away from me as Holmes lay nearly dead, one room over. She had found it. When? Only as Lucas blackmailed Lady Hope for it? When it spellbound Hope and Bellinger? Or even Lord Holdhurst? Whenever she had rejoined its adventure, she’d done it in rather bold style. According to Holmes’s prophecy, she’d killed Lucas for it. Imagine her dismay when she couldn’t find the thing. And yet, I could not help but admire her creativity and adaptability. Only a few hours later, she’d come and put Holmes and myself onto the track she’d lost. A white cloak, a sob story and a kiss on my cheek had been all she’d needed to set the world’s most powerful sorcerer running errands for her. Ye gods, in his prophecy, Holmes had even said: She has minions… unwitting minions who search for it…

  He might have mentioned he meant us.

  “What are we to do?” Holmes asked.

  I thought about that for a few moments, turning the card the Woman had left us over and over in my hand. Finally, I smiled.

  “We have the advantage of her, Holmes. She has no way of knowing we’ve discovered her deception.”

  “Unless she was following us,” Holmes reasoned. “She is a master of disguise, so she could have passed herself off as anybody and observed us—”

  “Yes, yes! But most likely, she is unaware. She expects us to march blithely into her hotel and present our findings to her. I propose we do exactly that!”

  “But I think we should keep Moriarty,” Holmes whined.

  “Oh, we will. And more than that, we’ll be capturing the Woman, as well.”

  “Oooooh, I just don’t know if I’m comfortable with that, Watson. I don’t like the idea of helping you start a girl collection—I’ve long feared the day your lonely mind snapped and did exactly that. Besides which, she’s smarter than we are. We are outmatched.”

  “Holmes! The game is afoot! The wheels are turning! Do you propose we should let others determine our fate while we sit idly by?”

  “Please? Just this once?”

  “Get your coat, Holmes.”

  * * *

  Much to my chagrin, the false Lady Hope had selected a hotel nearly all the way across town. As the day was wearing on, London’s famous traffic had reached full swing. The journey took longer than I’d have liked, especially as we had to stop twice along the way to pick up a small attaché case and some cheap gray paint to disguise it. Yes, the original case was safe at 221B, but I had a fairly good facsimile under my arm when we at last alighted outside the Crooked Crumpet.

  It was not as I’d expected. From the outside, it looked just like any other disreputable East End hovel. One step through the door, however, and the visitor was met with the perfect cross between his familiar neighborhood tavern and Emperor Caligula’s debauched boudoir. The dimly lit room was hung with scarlet bunting and shone in the flickering light of a dozen perfumed-oil lamps. The place seemed to be composed entirely of dark corners. Several men lounged at tables and on piles of cushions, drinking liquor from tiny crystal goblets and smoking strange cigars. From behind a gilded and gaudy bar lined with dozens of bright glass bottles, a perfectly working-class bartender asked, “Help you, gentlemen?”

  “I certainly hope so. I am looking for… er…” I glanced down at the card and read, “Bang Cleopatra.”

  The bartender shrugged and scratched an eyebrow. “Won’t be cheap. Especially for two of yeh. Oi! Bang-bang!”

  A muted clamor ran through the clientele. All eyes turned to the top of the stairs. Momentarily, there appeared a muscular young man in his twenties. He wore a long Egyptian gown, dark eye-makeup and a clinking beaded wig. He glided gracefully to the banister then, with sudden violence, thrust both hands down to point directly at a suspicious bulge halfway down his dress which gave the astute observer reason to believe he was probably not a lady.

  “Bang!” he yelled, then raised both hands above his head and spread his fingers as the boughs of a breeze-kissed fig tree and breathily whispered, “Clee-oh-pa-ta-rahhhhhhhhh!”

  “I know I called our foe a master
of disguise,” Holmes reflected.

  “Still, I cannot help but suspect: that isn’t her.”

  “Damn!” I cried.

  “Damn it all! Back to Baker Street!”

  * * *

  We were too late. The first thing that greeted us as we rushed in was the prostrate form of Mrs. Hudson. For a moment, I feared the worst. (Best?) Yet, as I leaned in to check her pulse, she stuporously muttered, “Lady came to see you gents. Nice lady. Gave me the sweetest little kiss…”

  At the top of the stairs, the door to our rooms lay open. When Holmes saw it, his eyes went wide with terror.

  “No! Impossible! Nobody can get in there!”

  “I hate to correct you, Holmes, but with Mrs. Hudson out of the way there was nothing to stop her. I don’t recall that we even locked the door.”

  “Locked the door? How long have you known me, Watson? Do you assume a mere door latch to be the extent of my defenses? Have you ever—ever—seen anybody enter my home unbidden?”

  “I have.”

  “No! Never!”

  “But I have,” I told him, thinking carefully back. “James Munro did it, the day he brought us the Adventure of the Yellow Bastard.”

  “He re-entered 221B,” said Holmes, “having first been invited in by Mrs. Hudson in our absence. Remember, she is the owner of this house and ownership is dashed important in magical matters.”

  “Well then, what about Grimesby Roylott? He smashed our door right in, if you recall.”

  “He was a powerful practitioner of magic, Watson. More to the point, he was in current possession of this domicile’s ancient mystic guardian.”

  “Mrs. Hudson?” I gasped. “I remember that she was dangling off his leg, but am I supposed to believe she is an ancient mystic guardian?”

  “You must at least concede she is ancient,” said Holmes. “Come on, let’s go and see what’s happened up there.”

  Little had changed. Some papers had been shuffled about on our mantel. There was a kiss-mark left on my pillow in bright red lip-rouge. I was fairly sure it wasn’t one of mine. Yet, our main loss was apparent and the lack of damage to 221B must have corresponded with the obvious placement of our invader’s target. The battered attaché case was gone from our dining-room table. Moriarty was once more beyond our power.

  “No!” cried Holmes. “How? Nobody can come here uninvited!”

  “Oh… er… about that, Holmes…” I spluttered. “I may have invited our first Lady Hope to visit us again. Erm… whenever she wished.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “Why not? I rather liked her, at the time. Besides which, how was I supposed to know about your little invitation trick? You never told me.”

  “And you never guessed? Damn it, Watson! I must say, your famous powers of deduction have failed you. You have been most… most…”

  “Injudicious?” I volunteered.

  “Injudicious!”

  Holmes flung himself into his favorite chair and fretted for the rest of the evening, occasionally pulling at his hair and uttering prognostications of unavoidable doom. I made him some toast and soup, but he ignored it.

  For my part, I felt strangely invigorated. Yes, it was impossible to call the Adventure of the Disgusting Stain anything but a defeat. Yet still… So many threads from our earlier adventures were beginning to weave themselves into a cohesive whole. Moriarty was back and making trouble. And this new antagonist of ours, so wonderful and deadly—I think, even in those early hours, I’d become fascinated with her. I fancied that if Moriarty was Holmes’s great nemesis, the Woman was mine. Yet I managed to disregard the most important thing I knew about her: the perfect truth of Holmes’s warning.

  She was smarter than us.

  We were outmatched.

  THE ADVENTURE OF MY GRAVE RITUAL

  RUMINATION WANTS TOBACCO.

  How else is the well-bred gentleman to communicate to the world that he is deep in thought? If he cannot furrow his brow, lean the leather-patched elbow of his thinking jacket down upon the table in front of him, chew thoughtfully at the stem of his pipe, taking occasional, reflective puffs and staring off into the middle-distance—how is he to make it clear he’s engaged in deep cogitation? Why, he might just be sitting there, doing nothing at all!

  In other words, it was a damned inconvenient day to be out of tobacco, for I had much to ponder. I elected to do what any gentleman would. No, not put on my boots and walk a block to the tobacconist’s. To steal some of my companion’s, of course. Holmes had tobacco. I knew it, because of the rather strange storage method he’d worked out. A few days previous I’d woken to find my friend had nailed an old Persian slipper to our mantel, hanging toe downwards. To my continued surprise, I found it stuffed with tobacco. I’m sure I meant to howl at him for it, but I’d forgotten. What was one more domestic peculiarity, in the face of my present woes?

  I had this problem with the Woman, you see. I had this problem with Moriarty.

  I stole a pipeful of Holmes’s shag and sat down to worry. Clearly, the game was afoot once more. I knew my opponents, but not their goals. In point of fact, I didn’t even know the Woman’s name. (Though there was every indication it wasn’t Bang Cleopatra.) I puffed and pondered. I had to assume the Woman’s plan continued to move forward to some nefarious purpose, hidden from my sight. What was my counter-move? I needed to make one, didn’t I? Surely I should not just sit about, smoking, while the game moved on without me!

  Speaking of which…

  I got up and helped myself to a second pipeful of Holmes’s stash and sat back down.

  At least my two problems had become one. The Woman—so far as we knew—was in current possession of the Moriarty Rune. But was she working with him or against him? Whatever the case, I realized I must think of Moriarty as nothing but an accessory to my true, current nemesis. Yes, my current focus must be upon the Woman and my first moves must be designed to gather information. I had almost decided to get up and actually do something, when the door opened and removed my chance.

  “Hullo, Watson!” Warlock piped up, hanging his coat on its hook by the door. “How goes the brooding?”

  “Fairly well, I suppose. Oh, I hope you don’t mind, but I helped myself to a bit of your tobacco.”

  “Think nothing of it,” said Holmes, and started jauntily back towards his room. Just as he swung open his door, he stopped. It seems some unpleasant remembrance had suddenly arisen to trouble him. His lips pinched together in thought for a moment, then he slowly said, “Except… I am currently out of tobacco.”

  “No you’re not; you’ve got a whole slipper full of it, hanging just over there.”

  “Ah! What have you done?” shouted Holmes. He recoiled, staring back and forth between myself and the slipper, then demanded, “Who are you?”

  “Me? I am John Watson. Your friend.”

  “Are you? I do not address the flesh only, but the will that commands it! Name yourself!”

  “Um… still John…”

  “I invoke the name of Xantharaxes the Undying! If he is present, he must declare himself!”

  “I’m John. I’m Watson. Same as always.”

  “Oh?” said Holmes, brightening. “Well that’s lucky, isn’t it?” He marched over to me, took my pipe, stared thoughtfully into the bowl for a few moments and gave the ash a poke. “Hmmm…” he said, then went to the mantel and gave a few thoughtful finger-jabs down into the slipper. “So, this can be smoked? I wouldn’t have thought it.”

  “Of course tobacco can be smoked. That’s what it’s for.”

  “I know perfectly well what tobacco is for,” said Holmes, rolling his eyes at me. “What I do not understand is why you’d assume this to be tobacco.”

  “Well… because it looks and smells like it.”

  “Really?” He gave a few more pokes down into the slipper, then gave it a reluctant, inquisitive sniff. “I suppose it does, rather.”

  “Holmes?”

  “Yes,
Watson?”

  “Are you telling me that’s not tobacco?”

  “What? Oh… er… you know what, let’s not worry about that, eh?”

  “Holmes, what is in that slipper?”

  “I’m not sure you want to know, Watson.”

  “Well, now I really do.”

  “You promise you won’t be angry?”

  “No. I don’t promise that at all.”

  Holmes gave a little sigh and asked, “Have you heard of Darius I?”

  “The Achaemenid Persian king?”

  “That’s the fellow. He wasn’t born to that throne; he took it by force. He had a whole story set up, where the reigning king wasn’t really who he claimed to be, but an impostor who needed to be murdered. Which Darius did, with the help of six rich friends, three thieves, two tricksters and one rather impressive sorcerer: Xantharaxes the Undying. But once he had the throne, he had a problem: those twelve people knew for certain that he wasn’t the legitimate king. The rich friends got to stay, but it wasn’t long before he decided the thieves, tricksters and sorcerers needed to go. Of course he worried—not without reason—that the murder of Xantharaxes the Undying might be a bit of a difficult egg to poach. Xantharaxes had made the claim that the pieces of his mortal remains, no matter how damaged, would mend and regain life after his death. Darius, it seems, had reason to believe it. Thus, immediately following the execution, Xantharaxes was mummified, shredded, wrapped in some of his old clothes and scattered across the length and breadth of the Persian Empire. It was thought that this might prevent his resurrection—if not forever, then for a very great while.”

  “I just smoked part of a mummy?” I cried, clutching my throat.