A Study in Brimstone Read online

  He agreed with an earnest nod. Holmes and I tossed aside the cushions and stepped through, but there was nothing to find. Trevelyan kept his quarters neat and had decorated them with circus and trapeze paraphernalia. The best of his pieces was an ingenious clockwork tableau. Only wind the key, press the lever on the front and the whole thing came to life. As the clockwork ringmaster raised his hat, the cannon behind him elevated and fired a thrashing clown towards a solid brick wall. Just before he hit, a man on a trapeze swooped down, caught him by the hands and swung him to safety. I found the story highly unlikely, yet I could not help but marvel at the hundreds of minute brass gears and levers that turned a simple swing of a pendulum into such perfect mimicry of life.

  My fascination with this clockwork wonder notwithstanding, we found nothing of interest in Trevelyan’s rooms. He was able to answer for every item, down to each plate and spoon—nor did he think that anything had been disturbed. Lost for further inspiration, I suggested, “Shall we journey downstairs, gentlemen, and see what Blessington was so keen to protect?”

  “He keeps a great deal of money in the house,” Trevelyan suggested. “I thought that must be the source of his fear.”

  “Is it well hidden?” I asked.

  “Not at all. He keeps a cashbox on his desk.”

  “Well secured?”

  “No. Not even locked.”

  “Strange,” I pondered. “Given the amount of time you spent with our Monsieur Me’doreux, I would have thought his accomplice must have discovered such an obvious haul. If so, they would already have taken it, wouldn’t they? Blessington would be furious at the loss, but what would be left for him to protect? Either this cashbox was overlooked, or the thief was after something else.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what.” Trevelyan shrugged.

  “Well, show us the box, to begin with,” I said. “Perhaps we shall find another treasure.”

  In the hall we passed Blessington, still pinned to the floor, gasping for help.

  “He’ll be all right,” Holmes said, then gave Blessington a little kick and reminded him, “I did warn you, if you recall.”

  Blessington’s rooms were… what shall I say… like a kingly hovel. At first I thought the thief had ransacked the place, yet I soon realized that no man but Blessington had wrought this destruction. The mess was too personal and too established. Dirty clothes lay in every corner, the wreckage of meals in every nook. Yet—even in this filthy den—the man’s wealth was evident. I kicked aside a discarded dinner jacket; its extreme size testified that it did belong to Blessington, but only when it was in the air did I realize it was one of Savile Row’s finest, fit for any duke. Hanging from a doorknob nearby was the shirt to match it and in the cuffs were a pair of platinum links, emblazoned with a pure gold monogram: H.M. The workmanship was extraordinary and the cost must have been vast. Clearly Blessington was accustomed to the finer things, but not to treating them finely. For a moment I despaired of ever finding a clue amidst the clutter, until Trevelyan said, “Ah! There’s his cashbox.”

  Holmes gave a sudden gasp and stood frozen in the doorway to Blessington’s study. Peering round him, I beheld the plainest wooden box I think I have ever seen. It was constructed of some kind of dark, well-worn wood. It had hinges of heavy bronze and a latch of the same. Apart from that, it was all but featureless. I could not name the artistic style it was constructed in, nor even guess at the country of origin. All I could say for certain was that it was old—very old indeed. I tried to push past Holmes to examine it, but he thrust me back, crying, “Do not touch it, Watson!”

  “What is it?” I asked, but he ignored me and turned instead to Mr. Trevelyan.

  “Have you ever seen Blessington open that box?”

  “Many times.”

  “What does it contain?”

  “Well… money, obviously.”

  “Nothing more?” Holmes demanded.

  “Not that I have seen.”

  Holmes edged into the room, eyeing the box with deep distrust. Taking up a silver fountain pen, he inched closer to the box and gingerly pried back the latch. Then, with his eyes squeezed almost shut, he tipped the lid up, ever so slightly.

  Nothing happened.

  Holmes breathed a thankful sigh and casually flipped the lid open the rest of the way. I could just see a disorganized wad of one- and five-pound notes, which rested on an equally disorganized wad of ten- and twenty-pound notes.

  “Only money,” Holmes laughed, then snatched up the box and swept past Trevelyan and me into the hall and up the stairs. When he reached the top landing, he crouched over the recumbent bulk of Mr. Blessington and reached inside the fallen man’s mouth. Holmes plucked out an object that looked like a fuzzy, coal-colored cotton ball—from which the tendrils of dark smoke emitted—and flicked it into a nearby corner.

  “Where is the other box?” Holmes demanded.

  Freed from his smoky bonds, Blessington hauled himself into a sitting position and shuffled backwards, coughing and wheezing, until his back bumped against the far wall. Holmes had no consideration for the man’s recent plight, but urged, “The other box, Blessington! It’s a matter of some urgency, as I think you must realize.”

  Yet, when our rotund host found his voice again, it was only to say, “No other box.”

  “You mean to say you have never owned another box? Just like this one?”

  “No. Never. Why should a man want more than one cashbox?”

  “For that matter, why should a man keep so much money in one, then leave it unlocked and unguarded? There’s a perfectly good bank just round the corner,” said Holmes.

  “Ha!” Blessington scoffed. “Never trust a bank, Mr. Holmes! No, I shall never trust a bank!”

  “You, of all people, wouldn’t, would you? I will ask you one more time, Mr. Blessington, and then I am leaving: where is the other box?”

  “There is no oth—”

  “The truth! Speak the truth to me, Blessington, or I cannot help you!”

  Yet, he did not. “Get out! Get out of my house!” he shouted at Holmes, then turned on Trevelyan and howled, “And you—you mincing fairy—get back in your rooms, do you hear? You get back in there and don’t you dare leave before I say!”

  Holmes shook his head, stood up and turned to Trevelyan, saying, “Don’t. That is very poor advice. In fact, I think you had better only set foot in there once more. Go and gather those things that are most precious to you—only as much as you can carry. Make haste. You are moving out.”

  “Today?” asked Trevelyan.

  “This instant.”

  “But… but what shall I do? I have nowhere to go.”

  “We shall just have to make sure you possess the means to render such concerns moot,” Holmes shrugged. He flipped open Blessington’s cashbox, extended it towards Trevelyan and said, “How much do you think you will need? Keep in mind that it should be enough to start anew—somewhere far from here, if you are wise.”

  “Stop that, you!” Blessington shouted.

  Holmes turned back to him with disgust and said, “Unless it is the truth about the other box that is crossing your lips, I do not wish to hear more from you.”

  “You can’t give away another man’s property!”

  “This is not your property,” Holmes countered, then turned to us and said, “He stole it. So don’t feel bad, Mr. Trevelyan. Take what you need and forget this place.”

  “To start anew…” Trevelyan reflected.

  “In comfortable style,” said Holmes.

  “Well that might take… perhaps… five hundred pounds, don’t you think?”

  Five hundred pounds, indeed! I don’t know how much Jules Léotard earned in his storied career on the trapeze, but I will wager it was less than that kingly sum. Holmes just smiled and said, “It’s best to be sure, though, don’t you think?”

  “So… seven, then?” Trevelyan asked, hopefully.

  “That sounds apt,” Holmes agreed. Blessington g
ave a cry of protest, but was silenced by a harsh look from Holmes.

  “Now go to your rooms,” Holmes ordered Trevelyan, as soon as the latter had selected his handful of banknotes, “and gather what is precious to you. Watson and I will wait. Take a few minutes only, this place is not safe.”

  “I shan’t need much,” Trevelyan said. “Why keep those old rags now?”

  “Why, indeed?” said Holmes.

  Trevelyan disappeared into his quarters and I hissed to Holmes, “I can stand it no more! What in the world is that box?”

  “This box? Merely a portal.”

  “To what?”

  “Another box.”

  “Don’t be vague, Holmes,” I said. “If you keep secrets from me, how can I be expected to deduce the truth?”

  Holmes softened somewhat, but said, “I will not speak of it in front of Blessington. He may yet have some chance to work mischief before you and I are prepared to deal with the second box. We must return on the morrow, girt for battle. All I will tell you now is that you have heard of this item before, or at least its first unfortunate owner.”

  “Have I?”

  “Pandora. As with all myths, the story has diverted from the truth, but the cautionary core—that a terrible beast lives within a simple box—is correct.”

  That was enough to quiet me. Trevelyan returned, dragging a laden trunk. As I assisted him down the stairs, Holmes turned to Blessington, who still sat on the landing clutching a pillow across his breast and staring past us at the front door with an expression all of fear, devoid of hope.

  “Last chance,” Holmes said. “Tell me the truth and I may yet save you. Cling to your promises, your lies and your misbegotten treasure and they shall devour you.”

  Blessington said nothing. Holmes shrugged. “I thought as much. Well, I wish you luck of it. Perhaps we shall meet again.” Holmes chucked the cashbox and remaining bills into Blessington’s lap and turned for the door.

  We hailed two cabs. Trevelyan drove away in the first, still in awe of his newfound fortune. Once we were settled in the second, Holmes asked, “What do you make of Blessington?”

  “To begin with, Blessington is not his true name,” said I.

  Holmes sat up in surprise and fixed me with a look of admiration. “I say! Well done, Watson. How did you know?”

  “I noticed a pair of cufflinks in his rooms. They were monogrammed ‘H.M.’”

  “Well, that solves one little mystery, then,” said Holmes. “He must be Henry Moffat.”

  The name struck me as familiar, but though I wracked my memory, I could not say why. Holmes watched me puzzle a moment, then prompted, “I think you must have heard of the Worthingdon Bank Gang.”

  “Ah! The Worthingdon Imploders! Yes, it was in all the papers. I recall the trial: They caught the gang, hanged the leader, sent the rest to jail. The one who informed on them got a shorter sentence—that would be Henry Moffat, I assume. If I recall, Scotland Yard never did find out how the gang smashed open the bank vaults, did they?”

  “I think I know, Watson,” Holmes mused. “They used ancient and terrible magics. The box we saw today, as I told you, is a portal to another box. Whatever is placed in one box can be withdrawn from the other, no matter how far away the boxes may be. The contents effectively exist in two places. There is one notable exception: in the dangerous box—the true Pandora’s box—there lives a terrible beast. It can only enter and exit through the true box.”

  “What has this to do with bank robbery?” I asked.

  “It is quite elementary. Suppose Blessington—or one of his confederates—is in possession of both boxes. He goes to a bank and deposits the true box. It sits in the vault, dormant and harmless, until one night the owner of the boxes pricks his finger and drops some blood into the second box. Remember that whatever is present in one is also in the other—so now the beast has had a taste of blood. Hungry for a complete sacrifice, the monster abandons its home in the first box and seeks prey. At night, there is nobody in the bank—maybe a night watchman, but he would be outside the vault. That is important, for the beast would have to go to get him and everything it touched on the way would corrode.”

  “I remember it from the papers,” I said. “At each bank they hit the vault doors had rusted away and the walls had crumbled to dust.”

  “After eating the night watchman—or whoever else it could find—the beast probably slunk back to its home, happy and docile as a well-fed cat. Then the robbers needed only to walk into the ruined vault and stuff any surviving monies into the dangerous box, knowing they could be removed from the safe box at any convenient moment. A few days later, the owner could go withdraw the dangerous box from the wreckage of the bank and deposit it in the next one they had decided to rob.”

  I shook my head and said, “Such things are foreign to my understanding, Holmes. Yet if it works as you say, it is an ingenious method.”

  “Moriarty was clever,” said Holmes.

  The statement piqued my interest, for I knew Moriarty only as the demonic voice that issued from Holmes from time to time. His prognostications had always proved true—and highly useful—yet I knew Holmes to harbor extreme distaste for him. I chose my next words delicately. “How does Moriarty enter into this, Holmes? Who exactly is he?”

  “Nobody now,” said Holmes. “He is gone forever.”

  I knew that to be untrue, but I held my tongue until Holmes added, “He used to be a criminal mastermind. Oh he was a spider, Watson, ever at the center of a vast, invisible web. He never got his hands dirty and his name was unknown to most of his victims. Yet make no mistake, he was responsible for almost every crime of a magical nature committed on this continent—much of America and Asia too, I think. Through these crimes, he amassed a collection of magical artifacts unmatched by any other man in history. And how did he use them? For further crime. He armed his gangs with an arcane arsenal sufficient to render his men unstoppable and their methods inscrutable to the common investigator.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “I knew Moriarty. I knew him very well,” Holmes said. “In fact, I have seen the boxes before. I knew them to be a prized possession of Moriarty’s, though I failed to guess the true nature of the thing that lived therein. My first inkling came when Trevelyan mentioned that Blessington was trying to protect the box from a man named Moran. Sebastian Moran was a trusted lieutenant of Moriarty’s—a most dangerous fellow in his own right, I might add. Once I learned Moran was involved, saw the box, saw Blessington’s wealth and heard his low regard for banks, I surmised the rest.”

  “Well that is it, Holmes! That is deduction! Well done!” I cried. “But exactly what is it, Holmes? The thing that lives in the box, I mean.”

  “Time.”

  I think I must have sat agape for a moment, until Holmes took pity on me and leaned forward to disclose one of the greatest secrets of this world.

  “I have told you before that our realm is a virtual paradise to the beings of other realities. That is not to say we have no demons of our own. The greater ones are so dominant that they are perceived by mortal men not as monsters, but as fundamental qualities of reality. They are gone beyond entities; they are physics.

  “Time exists in every realm I know of, but in many of them it is not a poison. In other realms, age is more likely to improve a thing than to wear it down—thus very ancient things are amongst the most powerful. Here, every man and bird and rock and tree must know that time will eventually corrode and destroy it. That is what lives in the box: the ability—or no, let us say, the onus—of time to destroy all things. Let me tell you: if outside entities understood exactly how deadly time is in our realm, they might be less eager to join us.”

  I gave a low whistle and asked, “If that is so… if that is our nemesis, how are we to combat the killing power of time?”

  “That is the question of the day, isn’t it?”

  Holmes returned his gaze to the world outside the carriage win
dow. He had a particular love of windows and seemed always fascinated with what lay beyond them. He could stare for hours at the world presented by the pane, wondering if the things he saw were true or only a projection upon the glass, offered to deceive him.

  * * *

  I hardly saw Holmes for the rest of the day. Upon our return to 221B Baker Street, he flew from the cab, up the steps and into his room. There, he busied himself with a number of his books and his strange alchemical laboratory. He spent the remainder of the afternoon tink-tink-tinking at tiny scraps of metal with a minute hammer, staring down at them from time to time with that magnifying glass of his. Gradually, the metal scraps and the bubbling beakers of foul-smelling fluid he occasionally dipped them into became too much for his tiny desk to accommodate. At this point, he emerged from his room and begged the use of the sitting room, enjoining me to find some outside entertainment for the evening.

  I made Holmes a steaming pile of toast and a pot of soup, then wiled the evening away at a local second-run theater. I returned home at just about ten to find Holmes still puttering. He looked worn, but rebuffed my attempts to get him to rest. I myself went to bed less than half an hour later. I did not see him again until the dead of night. As I lay in slumber, a shadow fell across my face and the sudden change in light induced me to wakefulness. There was Holmes, leaning gleefully over my bed.

  “Watson, I’ve a gift for you!” Warlock piped up, then immediately his expression fell to one of deepest dismay and he cursed, “No! Damn! I can’t say that, can I?”

  I rolled over and stared at him, blinking the sleep from my eyes. “What are you talking about, Holmes? What gift? What time is it?”

  “Gift? There is no gift. Damn! You see? Now I can’t give it to you. I’ve promised you a gift and it wouldn’t work if this was the gift, would it? Ownership is damnably important in magical matters.”