Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine Read online

  “Who can say?” Holmes replied.

  Leverton’s smile broadened. “I imagine you could, if you wanted to. But men like you and my employer are careful with their secrets, aren’t they? And that’s as it should be, Mr. Holmes. That’s as it should be.” He leaned around Holmes again. “I’m so glad to hear you’re all right, Inspector Hopkins. When I saw the door open, I was afraid it might be you, though I think I asked you to wait outside, didn’t I? But, so long as there’s no harm done…”

  “No harm?” said Holmes, directing his burning gaze around the corpse-filled room.

  “No harm to friends,” said Leverton. “These men were murderers and thieves, Mr. Holmes. Only look at their hearts and you’ll know what they were.”

  Slowly, without taking his eyes off Holmes and the burning blade, Nathaniel Leverton leaned down towards the nearest corpse. He pulled open the man’s shirt, sending two or three buttons clattering across the floor. Emblazoned upon the skin beneath was a scarlet circle.

  “They call themselves the Ring of Red Faction. They wish to see Rome returned to her former glory, with the nations of the world at her feet. But we have other business that requires our immediate attention.” His eyes fell on me. “The Pinkerton Detective Agency’s files regarding the recent defeat of Agent Burnwell lead me to suspect you might be Dr. Watson. Is that correct?”

  I hesitated a moment, unsure if I should give this man any information. My only previous association with the Pinkertons was when I’d conned the Beryl Coronet from one of their members, used it to resurrect Holmes, then returned it spent and useless. I was sure they couldn’t be all that happy with me. Finally, I gave an uncertain nod.

  “The man against the wall is Gennaro Lucca. I’d very much like to ask him about a powerful magical artifact that went missing from a Pinkerton man’s possession in New York City some years ago. Thing is, Gorgiano’s boys treated him pretty rough. I don’t suppose you’d have a look at him?”

  Leaving Hopkins, I went over to the fallen stranger. Though he did seem to have been used as a combined punching/stabbing bag by Gorgiano’s men, I had every hope for him. There was no sign that his skull had been fractured and the knife wounds were superficial. I mean… awful, but superficial. He must have put up a good fight, twisting and turning as the assassins struck, for he had a number of ragged gashes but no deep penetrations. As I began tearing up his jacket to make bandages and padding, he woke enough to struggle against me.

  “No, no, Mr. Lucca! It’s all right. I’m here to help,” I said. Then, as I realized Holmes was commanding most of Mr. Leverton’s attention, I leaned close and asked, “I don’t suppose you’d know the Italian words for come here would you?”

  As I worked, Mr. Leverton used the time to make overtures of alliance towards Holmes. Bless him, Warlock possessed the wisdom to display that certain reticence that is demanded every time somebody surrounded by a pile of fresh corpses says, “Hey, let’s be friends.” The green fire had cooled in his eyes and he’d put his sword away. Even the horns had begun to retract into his scalp, but it was clear he was far from enamored with our new acquaintance.

  “You’re on the side of the angels, that much is clear,” Leverton was saying. “That’s what my boss always says about you. Now, Mr. Pinkerton is a social thinker. He believes it is the responsibility of men of great power to change the world for the better. And he has. Do you know what I was when I met him? I was contraband. Now, Mr. Pinkerton is a little disappointed, Mr. Holmes, that you have effected no change yourself. But—he says—when you do act, you are a man of integrity and kindness. And do you know something, I think the two of you would get on pretty well.”

  As he spoke, I crawled over towards the window and righted the signal lamp as quietly as I could. Not quietly enough, it would seem, for Leverton turned and pointed a finger at me, demanding, “Now, what are you doing over there? You stop that.”

  “Watson is doing what he thinks is right,” said Holmes. “Something very clever, I shouldn’t wonder. You just deal with me, Mr. Leverton.”

  “No. The Pinkerton Detective Agency is in control of this case and no actions will be taken until they are cleared—”

  “You will deal with me!”

  But Leverton did not. He turned away from Holmes and shouted, “Dr. Watson, stop where you are!” His hand hovered threateningly over the gauntlet that dangled from his hip. A poor plan, as it turned out, for the entire room filled with the booming voice of Holmes.

  “If you touch that talisman, Leverton, if you summon that friend of yours, I’m afraid I shall have no option but to slay you both.”

  I could see Leverton’s mouth twist into a grim and bitter smile. “Make no mistake, Mr. Holmes, that thing is no friend of mine. No friend of any man’s. And you could no more kill it than you could kill the wind.”

  Holmes gave a wry laugh. “Mr. Leverton, I absolutely could kill the wind if I put my mind to it. Then again, the wind has never offended me. You, on the other hand, are beginning to. And if you Pinkerton fellows know the first thing about me, you know what would happen if you and I came to blows. Watson, do carry on.”

  I turned my back on the two of them and spent the next few moments carefully flashing out: V. I. E. N. I.

  Behind me, Nathaniel Leverton continued to argue his position. “Now, Mr. Holmes, what could I have done to offend you, eh?”

  “Do you know the criminal charge I’ve always been most afraid of?” said Holmes. “Not witchcraft. Not murder. Consorting with demons. Given the company we found you in, you’d be wise to worry about it, too. Now, why don’t you just sit down quietly on that chair over there while we wait for… whatever it is that Watson just did.”

  Holmes then whispered to me, “What was it, Watson? I hope it’s clever because if it isn’t we might look a bit foolish in front of the Pinkertons.”

  “Nothing too clever, I would think,” I said. “Yet it’s clear to me that Mr. Leverton may have a vested interest in painting Giuseppe Gorgiano and Gennaro Lucca in a certain light. As neither is currently capable of refuting such characterization, I thought fit to summon somebody who can: Mrs. Warren’s current lodger.”

  “Very judicious, Watson.”

  “She is a criminal and a liar!” Leverton insisted, waving a finger at us. “You’d be fools to trust a thing she says!”

  “We’ll be the judges of that,” said Holmes. “Oh, and since I deem it unlikely that you’ll sit quietly and let us…”

  The shadows at the corners of the room suddenly snaked forth, wrapped themselves around Nathaniel Leverton’s arms, legs, and mouth, pulled tight, and solidified. His cry of protest was choked off the instant he began it.

  “Holmes!” I hissed, and waved a hand at Hopkins. I needn’t have concerned myself. He hadn’t noticed. He sat outside the door, staring at the wall opposite him in pure, catatonic stupor. Being killed and resurrected twice in as many weeks will do that, I suppose.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Watson,” said Holmes. “But, by the gods, this Pinkerton fellow is tiresome. What do we do now?”

  I shrugged. “We wait.”

  And so we did, but not for long. In less than two minutes, the sound of running feet came to our ears and, a moment later, a lithe young lady leapt over Stanley Hopkins and burst in through the doorway. “Gennaro?” she asked. Then, spying him on the floor at the far side of the room, cried, “No! My Gennaro!”

  “He’ll be all right!” I told her. “I am a doctor and I’ve seen to him. His wounds are not serious.”

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Holmes answered. “We are friends to the hunted, the peculiar, the displaced and the vulnerable, which I strongly suspect makes us friends of yours.”

  She looked from Holmes, to me, to Leverton, to the corpses that lay all about. Her eyes went wide when she recognized Black Gorgiano amongst them. “What has happened here?” she cried, but then gave a gasp and added, “No! I see it! Gennaro! Oh, my brave Gennaro! They came a
t him, even as he was signaling ‘danger’ to me for the second time out of the three he likely intended. Like a knife in the darkness, they came to take his life! And see? He has slain them all!”

  Holmes and I exchanged glances.

  “Yep,” said Holmes. “You guessed it. That’s just what happened.”

  “And who,” said our guest, stepping in front of Leverton and gazing down at him with a wary scowl, “is this?”

  Leverton gave an earnest shake of his head, but despite that—or no, now that I put it to paper I am certain because of that—Holmes said, “His name is Nathaniel Leverton. He’s a Pinkerton detective. He claims he’s here hunting Black Gorgiano, but according to our somewhat stuporous friend Hopkins, he’s shown rather an interest in that fellow. What did you call him?”

  “Gennaro, my husband,” the lady said, “and I am Emilia Lucca.”

  “Warlock Holmes, at your service. This is my colleague, Dr. John Watson.”

  I bowed my head and she bobbed a curtsey.

  “Please,” she said, “please, you cannot give Gennaro and me to the Pinkertons. They’ve been following us since New York.”

  “Watson and I are not working with the Pinkertons,” said Holmes, in soothing tones. “Nor are we working with Scotland Yard. We are independent operators, concerned only with justice. Madam, if you think your cause is just, you would be wise to tell us all. Perhaps we may be of service to you.”

  She gave us a hard, appraising look for a moment, then reached up and pulled down the front of her dress.

  “Madam!” I protested.

  There, just above her left breast was the now-familiar crimson circle. Yet hers was different. A red line had been struck through its center. She ran to her fallen husband and tugged at his clothing until she revealed the same sigil upon his chest.

  “See? See? This is where our loyalties lie. Or… where they did. We repented of it and ran, but the Ring of Red Faction does not tolerate dissension. They swore to kill us.”

  “I hate it when people try to kill me,” said Holmes. “So tiresome. You have my sympathies.”

  “Mrs. Lucca,” I said. “I wonder if you can tell us how you fell in with this Ring of Red Faction, how you fell out and why the Pinkertons are so interested in making your acquaintance.”

  “I am the daughter of Augusto Barelli, of Posillipo, near Naples. Gennaro worked for my father. I came to love him, but my father forbade the match. We married in secret and fled to New York. But life there was hard—we found ourselves lost in a sea of penniless immigrants. Then, one day, Gennaro saved a fellow Italian from a gang of Bowery toughs, only to discover the man was Tito Castalotte, of the famous fruit-importation firm of Castalotte and Zamba. Gennaro had just saved the life of the most powerful man in New York.”

  “Hmmm… the power of all that fruit, one presumes?” I asked.

  “Look here,” said Mrs. Lucca, stamping her foot, “not all wealthy Italians who happen to live in America are connected to the Mafia!”

  “Of course not, madam,” I conceded. “But, Mr. Castalotte…?”

  “Oh, gods yes! He was. And he suggested Gennaro should come work for him, which was not an offer we were in a position to refuse. My Gennaro did good work for Mr. Castalotte. He might not have been very good at lying—he never could pass himself off as a legitimate businessman—but even his victims found his honesty refreshing. He became loved in the community and Tito Castalotte came to view Gennaro almost as a son, his real son having recently perished in a not-at-all-suspicious horse explosion. As it became increasingly assumed that Gennaro would inherit a great deal of control in the… ah… fruit empire, many people began to court his favor. One such group was a consortium of Mafiosi who had originally called themselves the Red Faction.”

  “Not the Ring of Red Faction?” I asked.

  “By the time we met them, but not at first. Gennaro liked them. They cared not only for crime, but social right. They wanted to stop the world from spitting on our countrymen—to find a way to make governments respect us. At first they were dedicated to inventing a gun that worked not only on people, but could shoot away walls and scenery, as well.”

  “Did it work?” Holmes wondered.

  “Sort of, but it wasn’t very satisfying. So they changed their name to the Ring of Red and decided to build a huge, armored war-machine that walked like a man.”

  “Oooooooh!” said Holmes, alight with appreciation. “Did that one work?”

  Mrs. Lucca shook her head. “They had one foot and part of a leg, before their funds and the genius of their engineers failed. So, at last, they changed their name to the Ring of Red Faction and—”

  But I cut her off, wondering, “They felt the need to change their name each time they tasted defeat? A strange compulsion, to be sure. But what strikes me as most peculiar is this: why should they continue to select such similar names?”

  She pointed to her chest. “Because that way the same tattoo could…”

  “Ah. Yes, of course. Do continue.”

  “In their third iteration, The Ring of Red Faction at last came across a weapon worthy of their cause. It seems that one of Pinkerton’s former operatives had become disenchanted with his organization’s methods and had fled. He must have been quite highly ranked, for he had in his possession a terrible weapon. Either he was a man of conscience or did not wish to be pursued abroad by Pinkertons looking to reclaim their property. As such, he stopped in New York just before leaving the country and attempted to mail the Pinkertons’ property back to them.”

  “He tried to post a doomsday weapon?”

  “What else could he do?” said Emilia Lucca, with a shrug. “If he went to see them in person, they would likely have detained him. He wanted to make sure the package got there safely, so he tried to impress upon the postal clerk how powerful and dangerous the contents were. Fortunately, he did make that impression. Unfortunately, the postal clerk was an Italian gentleman who owed money to Black Gorgiano.”

  “Ah…” I said.

  “So of course he stole the package and brought it to the Ring of Red Faction. But it was years before they began to understand how to use it. When Gennaro and I met them, they were still somewhat harmless. They had noble goals, we thought, but had yet to turn to dark means to achieve them.”

  “What kind of doomsday weapon?” said Holmes. “That’s the good part! Tell us about that!”

  “This Pinkerton man here could likely tell you more than I,” said Emilia. “It was only a small thing—a model of an ancient Roman symbol of power: the fasces. It was a bunch of black iron sticks, bound together with wire of the same black metal. In the time of Caesar, they were made larger, with rods of wood. You see, one rod—alone—can break, but many rods together become inflexible and strong. It is a symbol of unity. It seems that whoever held this black iron fasces could command unity of thought and action amongst his fellows and force their wills to join his. He could turn his followers against anybody who dared to stand apart—the strength of the many against the fragility of the one. It was said that there was a guardian who might be summoned by the man who held the fasces, but this was never accomplished before the fasces was stolen.”

  “Stolen?” I asked. “By whom?”

  “Gorgiano had continued to rely on the postal worker who first brought it to him—a kind old man named Benito Marinetti. In the old country, he’d been an organ-grinder; all the children loved him. But the Ring of Red Faction became ever more violent, ever more intolerant of those who did not think as they did. Marinetti could not forgive himself for helping such men come to power; he stole their weapon and ran.”

  Well did Holmes and I know it. Though we had never made the acquaintance of Mr. Marinetti, we’d come to know his friend Beppo fairly well. Moreover, we knew the location of the item that Marinetti, Beppo, the Ring of Red Faction, and the Pinkertons sought so earnestly: it was currently in Holmes’s bedroom. Warlock and I exchanged a nervous glance.

  “So… um… w
hat happened then?” Holmes asked.

  “We all thought the Ring would dissipate—they’d been three times defeated and were running out of names to adopt. But no! In the years after Marinetti left, Gorgiano became worse and worse. Finally, he murdered Castalotte and tried to assume control, using my Gennaro as a puppet. But we knew his heart! We got new tattoos, striking out the rings of red upon our breasts, and ran. We hoped to flee home to Italy, by way of London, and tell the Cosa Nostra how Gorgiano had betrayed them. It was no good! Word reached Italy that we were coming. To set foot on our home soil would mean sure death. Gennaro took a room at Mrs. Warren’s and secreted me there while he worked out safe passage. To make matters worse, Benito Marinetti had fled to London as well, and everybody assumed my Gennaro was in league with him! Black Gorgiano and the Pinkertons chased us all the way here, trying to reclaim the fasces, but—” she directed the final part of her statement at Nathaniel Leverton “—we haven’t got it!”

  Leverton rolled his eyes and gave the sort of look designed to communicate that he was absolutely willing to believe that statement—once he had interrogated Emilia and Gennaro to death, searched their luggage, searched the inside of their corpses, and offered similar treatment to anybody they’d spoken to in the last year, of course. Not before.

  I turned to my friend and said, “What must be done, do you think?”

  Holmes pursed his lips. “I can’t say Gennaro Lucca has his hands entirely clean, you know. But his wife seems nice. And I’ve never liked people who hunt people with the help of Scotland Yard under false pretenses. Mr. Leverton is likely to find himself bound until exactly midnight. What do you think, Watson, could we have our married fugitives on a ship by then?”

  “Absolutely not. This man is badly injured. Midnight is less than two hours off. Even if we had time to make travel preparations, he needs to be seen to.”

  “Oh,” said Holmes. He furrowed his brow and concentrated for a moment. There came the strange, creaking sound of shadows tightening and Nathaniel Leverton gave a little grunt of discomfort. “What I mean to say is next midnight. Now do you think we might manage it?”