Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine Read online

  “Did you know it?” I asked Mary.

  She gave me a grim shake of her head to say it was news to her.

  “Well, Father said everybody did,” Thaddeus retorted, “and I well believe him, for as soon as they showed Captain Morstan the treasure, it gave out on him! Or…” Thaddeus paused and sucked uncertainly at his vile hookah. “Or perhaps he just fainted, we shall never know. The treasure, you see, was kept in a large iron box. Mew. As your unfortunate father fell, Miss Morstan, his head hit the corner.”

  “That’ll make a dent,” Holmes noted.

  “Oh indeed—ah-hew!—a terrible wound,” Thaddeus agreed. “My parents were horrified. They tried to stand him up, but he collapsed once more. Sadly, as he fell, his head hit the c—”

  “—corner of the iron box, yes,” I finished.

  “Just so, just so! My parents tried to stand him up at least a dozen times more, but each time—”

  “Yes, yes. Corner of the box.”

  “Until there was practically nothing left of the man’s head, just a shapeless pulp. Oh, mew, it was the worst luck! Just unbelievably bad luck!”

  “Funny that you should choose the word ‘unbelievable’,” I said, “as I was just reflecting on what a very difficult time your parents were likely to have in convincing a judge that luck was the culprit.”

  “Hm. Mew. Yes. We had an old Indian butler named Lal Chowdar who thought so too,” said Thaddeus. “Or at least so my parents tell me. It’s odd that Brother Bartholomew and I don’t remember him, for we were well into our teens at the time, but my parents both insisted he was real.”

  “And what did this entirely non-fictional servant have to say about the matter?” I queried.

  “Well apparently, he burst in on them and said, ‘I heard you kill the guest, sahibs!’ Of course they protested that they had done no such thing.”

  “Of course.”

  “But he would not believe them, impertinent fellow!”

  “Oh, the cheek of him!”

  “And my parents began to realize that if even their trusted servant—”

  “Whom you do not remember…”

  “Ah-hew, yes. If even he did not believe them, how could they prove their innocence to a judge?”

  “How indeed?” I agreed.

  “Luckily, Lal Chowdar said he knew a way to dispose of the body where nobody would ever find it.”

  “Always a useful thing for a butler to know.”

  “It was. Mew-hew. My parents trusted him with the sad task. And so—though they were deeply aggrieved and ashamed—at least they were safe.”

  “And then the loyal Lal Chowdar died, or disappeared somehow, leaving your parents’ innocence perfectly intact.”

  “I am told he moved to Chicago,” said Thaddeus. “Which seems right. Father always said that anybody who knew where to hide a body would eventually wind up in Chicago.”

  “Fairly salient point, actually,” Holmes reflected.

  “Now, Thaddeus, I have to ask,” I said, “did your father ever give any indication of how he and one of his old army buddies should have happened to come into possession of a mysterious foreign treasure?”

  “Oh, no, no, no! Mew! No, I hardly dare to think of what Mother would have done if he ever spoke of such things. She always had trouble giving anything away, did Mother, even information. Hew. No. I always thought it might have something to do with Agra, in India, since it was called the Agra treasure and I know he spent some time stationed nearby. Yet he was chiefly in the Andaman Islands. Oh, and however he got it, I know it was somehow tied to his irrational fear of one-legged men and the number nine.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Did he ever happen to mention the phrase ‘the sign of nine’?”

  “Oh, yes. Frequently. If anybody ever mentioned the number nine, he always made them draw the figure, just to prove they could. Ah-hew. He always said if anyone ever wrote ‘the sign of nine’ instead of the digit, he would kill them where they stood. He hated the number. Why, when the local dairy delivered our milk—Brother Bartholomew and I were raised almost solely on milk, so delicate were our constitutions—he used to make sure the first two bottles were emptied at the same time. The crate held ten bottles you see, and he could not bear there being nine full ones.”

  “Peculiar,” I noted.

  “Hew. Yes. But not nearly so inconvenient as his feelings towards one-legged men. He once fired his pistol at a one-legged tradesman, in public.”

  I raised a finger and interjected, “This tradesman, what did he look like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know… poor? Hopeless?”

  “Light-skinned or dark, Mr. Sholto?”

  “Fairly light, I suppose. Average for an Englishman. Oh, but mew-eww, it cost us a fortune to hush it up. Mother was furious.”

  “More furious than she was at the death of Captain Morstan?” I hazarded.

  “Oh infinitely more so! Mother never seemed to have much sympathy for him, though Father seemed quite broken up about it. But then, that’s no surprise. Hew. He never had many friends, you know, and he always spoke fondly of Arthur Morstan. From birth, I knew his friend—and his friend’s unfortunate daughter—must one day come for their share of our fortune. I would often reflect how unfair it was that this had not been done. I used to write about it, especially as I was composing verses. Um… hew… I could show you if you like.”

  He shot a guilty sidelong glance at Mary. The shadow of a blush lit his pallid cheek and the truth of the situation hit me in a sudden wave of recognition.

  Of course. He was in love with her.

  Only by reputation, I suppose, but was that not enough? What must youth have been like for a half-demon, half-human hybrid, who wheezed and mewed with every breath and was forced never to roam far from his methane hookah? From the moment Holmes had mentioned his probable heritage, my doctor’s mind had begun to wonder whether—like many hybrid animals—Thaddeus Sholto might be infertile. Then again, the aesthete in me had put in a quick appearance to point out that—as a particularly hideous hybrid animal—he was unlikely ever to have the opportunity of finding out. It had not been difficult to imagine his family’s motives for not sharing the treasure. Yet why was Thaddeus so insistent that Mary must be given her due?

  Because he’d been planning it since adolescence. On his darkest day, he must have had only one thought that brought him comfort: that somewhere out there, was a girl. An innocent, kind girl, suffering in poverty. Bound to him by the shared destiny of their fathers’ treasure. If he could only save her, could he not prove himself a worthy creature? Someone who did not deserve the crushing loneliness that had been his birthright?

  For Christ’s sake, he had just volunteered to show Mary Morstan his poetry, which—could there be any doubt of it—must be absolutely packed with dreamy idealizations of her.

  For the first time in our long history of adventuring together, I felt as Holmes often did. I did not care if murder had been done. I did not care if there were a greed demon running loose in London. I cared about our client. It was not Mary Morstan, though she’d brought us the case. It was Thaddeus Sholto. By God, I felt so terrible for Thaddeus Sholto. I needed to help him. But how?

  As I pondered how to unravel the terrible net nature and chance had woven around the young de-man, I became conscious that Holmes was staring at me with the most quizzical expression on his face.

  “Right! Erm… right…” I spluttered. “Where were we? Ah, yes! Mr. Sholto, it has been years since the events you describe. In all that time, there has been no direct contact between your family and Miss Morstan, only the extraordinary gifts she received by post. Am I right in assuming it was you who sent the pearls?”

  Thaddeus colored even more deeply this time and gave me a grateful little smile, as if he were rather glad someone had brought the subject up.

  “Mew, hew… well… I did no more than honor demands, you know. I used to harry Father on the subject, and he always admitted that Arthur Morstan’s
orphan was entitled to his share. But he never let me act on it. The closest I ever got—ah hew!—was the one day he called me to his bedside. He was quite sick by that time. His liver, you know. Mew. And he showed me a golden goblet, set with pearls of extraordinary quality. There were tears in his eyes as he confided that he had resolved to send it to Miss Morstan a thousand times, and yet he could not bring himself to surrender it. He showed me where he had once pried out one of the pearls set in its base, thinking he might be able to part with just one of them. Yet he could not bring himself to do it. Hew. He wept and beat his chest and cursed his weakness. He knew I was the good son—ah-hew—and that I would have the strength to do what he could not. He forbade me to do it while he was alive, yet the instant his wicked heart ceased, he said, I must follow my conscience and make amends.”

  “Which you have,” said Holmes, with a warm smile.

  “Well, hew, partly,” Thaddeus replied. “Father didn’t make it easy. You see, he had always kept the main body of the treasure hidden, which was perfectly in keeping with his paranoia. Mew. Brother Bartholomew and I despaired that he was likely to go to his grave without telling us where it was. Yet one night he called us to his bedside. He said, ‘My dear boys, my time is come. I bequeath to you all I own. My two earthly responsibilities must now be yours as well. One of you must care for your mother. One must do what is right. I will trust you both to know which is which. Now, in order to do so, you must know where the Agra treasure is. You must bear the weight of it, the weight that has crushed my soul for so very long. Boys, I have placed it—’”

  We were all leaning in to hear the story, Mary Morstan most of all. Thaddeus gave a shrug.

  “Then—ah-hew—he died.”

  Mary was across the room in a second, waving her finger in his face. “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me!”

  “Madam! Hew!”

  “Mid-sentence?” I asked. “He died mid-sentence?”

  “Very nearly. He was looking at me as he spoke, but suddenly his gaze shifted to just over my shoulder. His hand flew to his chest. His face stiffened into the most horrible visage of pain and fright and he shrieked, ‘The one-legged man!’ For an instant, I thought he was delusional, but when I turned to look—oh! Mew!—There in the window! Such a horrible face. Hairy and rough and sunburned and feral. Staring in at us with such anger and hunger. It was more than Brother Bartholomew and I could stand. We are great sufferers—did I mention that?—great sufferers. We fell down in one of our fraternal swoons. Eww. Mew. When we awoke, Father was dead. The room had been ransacked and a paper with ‘THE SIGN OF NINE’ written on it was left upon my father’s chest.”

  “Hmm… Yes…” said Holmes, tapping his lips with scholarly gravity. “From what you say, it is possible the man entered the room and murdered your father while you and Bartholomew were unconscious. Still… I think natural causes are more likely. You see, though the human liver can fail at any time, such episodes are more common in moments of stress or great excitement.”

  “That is the heart, Holmes.”

  “The sight of his dreaded antagonist must have been too great a strain to bear. Your father suffered a sudden liver attack—”

  “God damn it.”

  “—and bore the secret to his grave. Tragic.”

  “And more than a bit inconvenient,” Mary added, narrowing her eyes at our host.

  If Thaddeus realized just how much blame lay beneath her words… well, I think he didn’t, for he failed to burst into tears. Instead, he simply agreed. “Oh! Mew! Dashed inconvenient. But Father had showed me where he’d hidden the pearl goblet, so I claimed it and announced my intention to send it to Miss Morstan. Mother was horrified to be separated from the treasure, and Bartholomew objected. He said to willingly send treasure away would be more than Mother could stand. She would die, he said. Hew! Preposterous! He did not want me to send so much as a single pearl. But, of course, I did.”

  “And how did your mother take the news?” Holmes asked.

  “She did die,” said Thaddeus, with a sad shake of his head. “Brother Bartholomew was furious with me. Ah-hew. But how could that be anything more than a coincidence? I have heard it is common for people to die soon after their spouse. Isn’t that true?”

  Holmes and I shared a pained look. If Mrs. Sholto was indeed a greed demon, sustaining herself by a connection to a great treasure, it was entirely possible that Thaddeus’s unselfish act may have severed that connection and doomed her. Then again, neither Holmes nor I were overly eager to voice that particular theory.

  “Sure,” said Holmes. “That sounds true.”

  “For years we could not find that treasure. Ah-mew!” Thaddeus complained. “I was forced to support poor Miss Morstan using only a single pearl per year. Brother Bartholomew stayed in our ancestral home, Pondicherry Lodge, but I fled here to escape his fury, and to await the day the treasure was discovered. And now—mew, hew—at last, it has been!”

  “Where’s my share?” said Mary Morstan.

  “It is all with Brother Bartholomew. We must plan the best way to encourage him to surrender your half.”

  “Oh, here’s my plan,” Mary growled. “We drive round there tonight and tell him to hand it over, right now!”

  Thaddeus threw a hand to his chest. “Madam! Do you propose I rob my own brother?”

  “Er… no,” I said, though I imagined that was exactly what she was proposing. “I think Miss Morstan is only suggesting that there is no benefit to delay. And would not a direct and honest approach be best?”

  “But so forceful! Hew!” Thaddeus said. Yet then he tilted his bulbous little head to one side and added, “Still… Miss Morstan has a point. Conflict is not in my dear brother’s nature. He was never as—mew, mew, mew—as masterful as I.”

  “Really?” I found myself asking, before I could choke it back.

  He turned defiant eyes on me and sniffed, “Yes, really! Hew! You will see! Hew! Yes! I am now convinced: Miss Morstan is entirely correct. Why shy from the inevitable? We must be bold! We must drive there right now and make our case. Miss Morstan, can you accompany me?”

  She made a face, as if this were the most foolish question she’d heard in some time, and said, “I suppose.”

  “Very good! Now… mew… if your escorts feel the hour is too late, I would be happy to—”

  “No, that’s all right,” said Holmes, brightly. “I want to see how it turns out. Right, Watson? Of course we’ll come.”

  “Oh…” said Thaddeus, a moment’s disappointment playing across his doughy features. Yet, to credit the man, he recovered instantly. He reached for an ostentatious brass bell that lay beside his pile of cushions and gave it two clangorous shakes. “Khitmutgar! Khitmutgar! Bring my hat! We are off on an adventure!”

  5

  HAD I THOUGHT I WAS PART OF A STRANGE GROUP, EARLIER in the evening? Ah, the benefit of hindsight. As we rolled away from Thaddeus Sholto’s house, I knew better.

  It had taken the old khitmutgar and Williams the boxer roughly a quarter of an hour to disassemble their master’s suspicious hookah and reassemble it in Sholto’s carriage. Thaddeus apologized for his weakness, but assured us that he was incapable of being separated from his “comforts” for long.

  Well did I believe it. Within minutes the interior atmosphere of the carriage had become nearly intolerable. Whenever Thaddeus Sholto went more than a dozen breaths without a puff from his hookah, he became visibly weakened and—strange to say it—even floppier than normal.

  Oh, and another thing: Holmes now had the second strangest hat of our little gang. Thaddeus rarely went outside, he said. Especially at night, for his ears got cold. He was a great sufferer—had he mentioned that? Yet he had a special hat for just such occasions. It was rabbit skin, he said.

  What he should have said was that it was two rabbits. Two unfortunate rabbits that had been caught, murdered, inexpertly hollowed out, and sewn into a peaked monstrosity that just managed to cover Thaddeus Sholt
o’s bizarre head. One rabbit had been gray, the other brown. Very little work had been done on them; they were mostly intact. Their stiff little legs shook up and down as the carriage bounced along. Their hollow eye-sockets stared at me, begging a sympathy that I certainly granted, though I suspect they failed to appreciate it. Both rabbits’ ears had been hacked away, inverted and sewn to their sides to make little flaps that hung down over Thaddeus’s own ears, to keep away the night’s chill. What an horrific sight he made, sitting across from me, holding his hookah-stem in one hand, absentmindedly stroking one soft rabbit-ear flap with the other, telling us all about his beloved brother.

  Holmes sat beside him. I had hoped Mary Morstan might sit beside Thaddeus—a privilege I’m sure he’d long dreamed of—yet Holmes still seemed to hope that romance might bloom between her and me, and resisted every attempt to place Mary and Thaddeus together.

  “Holmes, why don’t you sit near me?” I suggested.

  “No. You sit with Mary.”

  “I sat with Miss Morstan on the way here. Perhaps she could sit next to Mr. Sholto, so that you and I might confer.”

  “But, no. She needs to sit with you!”

  “Really, Holmes? Why?”

  “Because I want to sit next to Mr. Sholto.”

  “Oh, do you? And why is that?”

  “Well… um… because I want to try the hookah!”

  “You what?”

  “Yes! I’ve always considered buying one, you know. Yet I did not wish to do so until I’d tried one out. Mr. Sholto, I don’t suppose you’d mind?”

  “Oh, no! Mew! Wonderful things, really. And so underappreciated. Hew. I warn you, though: it’s strong stuff! Oh dear, strong indeed…”

  And suddenly I realized this was not a battle I minded losing. Let Thaddeus sit with Mary another day; tonight was for finer sports. Tonight was for watching Holmes try to keep a straight face while sucking on a methane hookah. It’s funny the little rewards adventuring brings.