A Study in Brimstone Read online

  You see, I still had no notion as to Holmes’s occupation or the source of his funds. Despite this, he seemed to have no concern over money, nor indeed did he place much value in it. When he needed me to go out so he could conduct his private business, he would often dispense a few shillings and encourage me to visit one of the local teashops. I don’t know which I resented more: the fact that he did this, or the fact that I always accepted. Thus, I decided to test the limits of his fiscal disregard.

  I directed my steps south to Fortnum & Mason’s, on Piccadilly. I knew of no other place so aloof, elite and criminally overpriced. I bought everything I could think of: the finest Ceylon tea, cakes, crumpets, French cheese, Italian wine, German beer, cold meats, greens and a truly singular marmalade I had admired once while lunching with the dean of my medical school. These I ordered in unnecessary quantities and asked that they be brought round at about two that afternoon. I hardly made it back before that hour myself, my legs being still uncertain. I pulled one of our sitting-room armchairs closer to the front window into a suitable vantage point to observe the coming exchange, sat and waited.

  Promptly at two, Mrs. Hudson ushered up a pair of porters who deposited two large hampers on our dining table. I had ordered even more than I realized. The quantity was such that the two of us could scarce eat it all before it spoiled, and the bill would have raised eyebrows at Buckingham Palace. Warlock did not mind in the slightest. He paid without complaint, smiling all the while, then as our landlady retreated grumpily down the stairs, he called out, “I say, Mrs. Hudson, you must come around some time and join us for one of our perfectly normal meals!”

  He then spun on his heel, whistled a cheerful jig, stepped over to our fireplace and proceeded to make himself his usual: toast and soup. He seemed to have no desire to examine his newly acquired mountain of victuals or even remove it from the table. He may not have been tempted, but I certainly was and, I confess, I proceeded to eat him out of house and home.

  Thus it was that, on that fateful Saturday, Holmes interrupted me in the middle of my fourth consecutive marmalade crumpet. I had been stuffing myself insensible for three days running. Holmes stepped out of his bedroom, gave me a nod and opened his mouth to mutter some pleasantry or other. Yet, it never came. All of a sudden, he stiffened as if stricken. His spine arched, his face contorted, he threw back his head and his eyes shone with such an intense brightness that I swear they illuminated a circle of the ceiling above him. In that strangely deep voice he had used the day we met, he intoned, “On the eleventh hour of the fifth day of the month of nine, thou shalt receive a dire messenger! The sea hath refused him—his sheep cast loose upon the waves to wander uncommanded. Fear him, for in his hand lies the mark of the reaper! Death brought him hither and discovery shall be thy fate, Holmes, if thou darest attend his challenge!”

  At that moment, his spine lost all its rigor and he crumpled to the floor in a heap. Tossing the crumpet to my plate, I ran to attend him. I found him shaking, sweating, even more pallid than usual.

  “What is wrong, Holmes? What has happened to you?”

  “Oh… why… nothing, Watson…” he stammered, his voice weak and uncertain, “I was… I was practicing for a play, you see.”

  “A play?” I demanded, incredulous.

  “Yes. Yes. A play, that is all.”

  “Much as I wish to believe you,” I said, “I cannot help but reflect that the only people who rehearse for plays are those people who are actually in a play. Which you are not, I think you will recall.”

  “Ah… yes. Well, no,” he spluttered, “but I hope to be. I practice this play, every year, in case some theater mounts it. Then I shall be ready to audition.”

  “What is the name of this play?” I pressed.

  “Uh… The Dread Messenger, of course,” he answered, then changed the subject. “I say, Watson, what day is it?”

  “November the fifth,” I said.

  “And what time?” he asked.

  “Ah… three minutes to eleven.”

  “But… that makes no sense, does it?” Holmes wondered aloud. I was sure he hoped I’d failed to notice his fell prognostication, but such was his confusion with his own message that he could not help but stop to puzzle it out. “Month of nine? September?”

  “There was some curious word choice, you know,” I reflected. “September may be the ninth month, but it is named for the Latin-derived term for seven: sept. Oct is eight; nov is nine; dec is ten. So, though the months are effectively named ‘Sevenmonth,’ ‘Eightmonth,’ ‘Ninemonth’ and ‘Tenmonth,’ their numbers no longer match their names.”

  “Curious,” said Holmes. “So, if it means the ninth month, then this warning relates to something that happened two months ago or which will happen, nearly a year hence.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Yet, if it relates to the proper name ‘Month of Nine’ or ‘Ninemonth,’ then it references an event which will occur…”

  As I could see he was having difficulty with the mathematics, I chose to inform him, “Roughly two minutes from now.”

  “What? Oh! Wonderful! Wonderful! Thank you for the ample warning, Moriarty,” he howled, then, “Watson, help me up! I must reach the window.”

  I pulled him to his feet and towards the armchair by our front window, thinking to deposit him in it, but he had no intention of resting. He propped himself on the windowsill and scanned the street below.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “That man there.”

  “That man?” I asked, peering at the large, hunch-shouldered figure he indicated. “Who is he?”

  “He is a retired sergeant of the Royal Marines,” Holmes said. “He’s coming here.”

  “Why?”

  “There has been a murder, I think.”

  3

  THE CARRIAGE BOUNCED ALONG, OVER THE COBBLESTONE streets, shaking the already pale Warlock Holmes where he slumped in the corner. He looked as one who is in the very depths of pneumonia, but he had absolutely refused rest. Our strange visitor—who had indeed been a recently retired sergeant of the Royal Marines—had come to deliver a letter. This proved to be the oddest missive I had ever seen, but the messenger seemed afraid of Holmes and would not tarry to explain it. As soon as he left us, Holmes resolved to set out immediately. He tottered to the hook by the door, donned his long tweed coat and that peculiar hat of his. I had never seen its like. He said it was called a soulstalker. Still unsteady on his feet, he asked to borrow my walking stick—which I happily lent him—then sent me into the street to hire a cab. Holmes asked the driver to hurry to 3 Lauriston Gardens and collapsed into the corner of the carriage.

  “Holmes,” I said, “you look terrible. Why are we rushing to answer this strange summons?”

  “Because Moriarty told me not to,” he said, staring out the window at the gray streets.

  “And who precisely is this Moriarty?” I inquired.

  “Nobody you ought to have any dealings with, if you can help it.”

  “Well, so you say, but it is a very strange business and I don’t understand—”

  “Yes, it is a strange business, but it is my business,” Holmes interrupted, “and the mere strangeness of it cannot contrive to make it any other man’s!”

  I demurred. This is a plea that cannot be ignored by an English gentleman, under any circumstances. The day an Englishman turns to any other and says, “Isn’t it strange that none of us get married until our thirties, yet when we do, it is to enjoy the ‘pleasures of the hearth,’ rather than out of fifteen to twenty years of pent-up sexual frustration? On what I’m sure is an unrelated note: I can’t help but notice our streets are choked with ‘flower girls,’ yet I never see anybody carrying newly purchased flowers. In fact, you yourself seem to visit the flower girls two or three times a day, but you never bring flowers to work. Or home. Or to the doctor’s office, where you go twice a week to combat your magnificent array of venereal diseases…” Well… that would be the day all our
lies unravel and our society collapses. Thus, we doggedly afford each other the luxury to conduct our own matters.

  “As you say,” I conceded.

  “Read me the letter again, won’t you?” Holmes asked—to change the subject, I think.

  I leaned over, pulled the letter from Holmes’s hand and read:

  I rubbed the letter with my thumbs, wiping away smears of dirt, blood and strawberry jam, musing, “This has to be a hoax.”

  “It is quite genuine, I assure you,” said Holmes, shaking his head gravely.

  “But who would… who would write such a thing?”

  “Torg Grogsson, just as it says.”

  “Well yes, but what manner of man…”

  “He is a detective inspector at Scotland Yard,” Holmes said.

  “Surely not!” I began to laugh, in spite of myself.

  “He is, I assure you,” Holmes shot back, “and a quite effective one at that. Perhaps he is not the finest example of reason or observational prowess, but there is more to police work than just that, Watson. When you meet him, I think you will realize why.”

  “Why?” I pressed, unwilling to wait.

  “The last word of that letter—before his name—which you read ‘on-uhr,’ is in fact ‘honor.’ It is the topic dearest to his heart. When you meet him, examine him carefully and ask yourself what might become of you if Torg Grogsson ever caught you in a lie.”

  Warlock turned to the window, threw his arms across his chest and settled into one of his sulks. I realized I had insulted a friend of his. As luck would have it, I had another topic I was all too willing to address.

  “Holmes… that messenger…”

  “Yes?” he snapped.

  “How did you know him to be a retired Royal Marines sergeant?”

  A look of extreme weariness crossed his features and he looked over at me as if he were a nine-year-old lad whom I had just found with one hand on my teacake and the other in my wallet. His eyes bespoke exhaustion and they sought mine, begging with a glance to be excused the labor of explaining. I said nothing, so he heaved a sigh and began, “Simple observation, of course. His left boot was spattered with a unique red mud, particular to a puddle outside the Royal Marines… sergeants’… pension… dispensing office, or whatever they call it.”

  “Is this unique red mud akin to the sample which told you I was staying at the Hotel d’Amsterdam?”

  “Don’t be cynical, Watson.”

  “I think his boots were clean, Holmes.”

  “I assure you, they were not.”

  “There is no sense arguing about it,” I said. “It is an easily settled matter. When we get home, we shall see if there is any dried red mud upon our carpet.”

  That upset Holmes. He began to stammer, “I wonder, did you note the tattoo on his left forearm?”

  Holmes seemed to have forgotten that our guest had been wearing a greatcoat. Either that or he’d forgotten greatcoats have sleeves.

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  “Well he had one and it was a large blue anchor and it said ‘Royal Marines, Sergeant, Retired, 1869–1880.’”

  I was sure our visitor had had no such thing, or at least that Warlock would have had no opportunity to see it.

  “Really?” I pondered. “That’s a peculiar tattoo, don’t you think?”

  “He was a peculiar man,” Holmes said.

  “What would drive a man to get such a tattoo, do you suppose?”

  Holmes shrugged.

  “Perhaps he was concerned that if ever he should die, and be discovered with no identification on his person, that the coroner would be unable to establish his previous occupation?”

  “Look here, Watson, I cannot surmise what drove the man to favor such a tattoo; I merely observed that he had one.”

  “Odd that I overlooked it.”

  “Hardly,” Holmes countered. “Most people see, but they do not observe. There is a difference between seeing a thing and observing it.”

  “I know,” I told him. “I’m a doctor.”

  But he continued unabated. “For example, Watson, how many times would you say you had traveled up or down the staircase from our rooms to the street?”

  Having been now about three weeks in his company, I estimated, “Fifty or so.”

  “Then you have seen those steps fifty times, Watson. I wonder, have you ever observed how many there are?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “There are, in fact, seve—oh… yes. Seventeen.”

  For a moment, he sunk back into his sulk, then jerked towards me with sudden vigor. He fixed me with a hideous grin, his green eyes burning, and demanded in his deeper voice, “But tell me, Watson, do you know their true names? If ever you should have to call upon the power, the loyalty of those steps, what name would you call them by, mortal?”

  I confess, I cried out and shied back towards the opposite corner of the carriage, spluttering, “Ah! Holmes! Really! Really now, I’m not sure such a thing as steps should have names.”

  “Ro’glugh!” he shouted.

  “I say!”

  “Griegh’eh!”

  “What?”

  “Mek-ek, Fef, Uhl,” he continued.

  “Holmes, are you quite all right?”

  “Hregah, Vie, Doff, Seff, Geg’ar, Zhess, Jierg, Bhe’dei, Mur, Mech’hel, Jekh’hel and Squeeee-errk-ka-reeek!”

  “The creaky one, third from the top!” I gasped.

  “Your instinct serves you well,” he said and began to issue a slow, deep laugh.

  “This is highly irregular, Holmes!” I said, but he would not cease his morbid laughter. Seizing the initiative, I demanded, “I wonder, would you say that a retired Royal Marines sergeant had been refused by the sea, leaving his sheep to wander uncommanded upon the waves?”

  “I would not,” he laughed, vaguely.

  “And yet you did.”

  “What? Did I?”

  “Just before the man appeared,” I said.

  “Out loud? Damn!” The fire in his eyes cooled and he drooped once more into his seat, muttering, “I hate that Moriarty…”

  We rode along in silence for a while. His breaths came ragged and tired. I stared at him. He was my deliverance from poverty, and I quite liked him, on a personal level. I had the sense he needed me. Still, there was so much of the inexplicable and dangerous about him, I half thought I should throw myself from the cab, take to my heels and not stop until I found myself master of a Jamaican cotton plantation. I told myself I would if the need arose, and gazed out the window to distract myself from the unwelcome thoughts that flooded in upon my repose.

  The morning was dreary. Though the rain of the past evening had abated, the low, oppressive clouds hung heavy with the threat of more. There is something malicious about November drizzle in London. It is always cold, unwelcome and delivered at the most fiendishly inconvenient times. The cab-horse was a veteran of some years’ service, with the rhythmic gait to prove it, but even he stumbled once or twice over irregular cobbles.

  “Why did we come?” I asked.

  Holmes said nothing.

  “Why does a detective inspector of Scotland Yard ask the help of a… of you?”

  Still staring out his window at the gray mass of London, Holmes admitted, “I am a sort of… consulting detective.”

  “But, what does that mean? What is a consulting detective? I have never heard of such a thing.”

  “No, well you wouldn’t have. I am the only one. It means that when certain individuals encounter a crime that they cannot solve, they call upon my powers.

  “Of observation!” he quickly added.

  “Quite,” I said, but I couldn’t help reflecting, “You know, Holmes, Scotland Yard has always seemed to project such an air of superiority that if God himself were to descend and offer to help them find the Holy Grail, they’d ask to see his badge.”

  Holmes nodded and agreed, “I don’t work with the Yard often. Or anyway, I don’t work with most of them at a
ll. But if Grogsson or Lestrade need my help, I must answer.”

  “Lestrade? That queer little man who comes to visit?”

  “The same,” Holmes said.

  “And they pay you for your help?”

  He sighed again, heavily. “No.”

  “Ah, then you are credited with solving the crime, which helps build your reputation for private practice?”

  “No.”

  “Then, Holmes, why are we going?”

  “Understand, Watson, the Yard and I… we get on rather poorly.”

  “Why?”

  “It can hardly have escaped your notice that I am an unusual sort of man.”

  “It has not,” I agreed.

  “To their way of thinking, I am a guilty outsider if ever there was one. Whenever there is a crime with… unusual characteristics, I must solve it as rapidly as possible, or expect to be accused of it, in short order.”

  “I see,” I said, “and you assume this to be such a crime?”

  “No,” he shrugged. “Or rather, I don’t know. It’s just that Grogsson and Lestrade are… unusual gentlemen themselves. Despite their positions, the rest of Scotland Yard seems to harbor almost as much suspicion of them as they do of me. Yet, these two are my only friends there. It is of some importance to my continued freedom to ensure that Grogsson and Lestrade remain the most effective inspectors on the entire force. So long as they continue to solve cases the others cannot, they are safe and so am I. So no, Watson, there is no money in this for me and no recognition, only safety. That is why I am going.”

  He settled back into his thoughts for a moment then suddenly sprang up and exclaimed, “Oh! Hey now! Why are you going?”

  I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t quite know. I’m sure I must have said something about abandoning a friend or the duty of a doctor to see to a seizure victim. But that was not the truth of it.

  Why was I in that cab?

  I had always considered myself a creature governed by reason; clearly, I had seen enough to know that Holmes was dangerous to me and dangerous to the fundamental foundation of my worldview, as well. Yet that, I suppose, was the very bait that had caught me. I realize that most men will shy away from a thing that contradicts their understanding. I admit I had done it too, ignoring Holmes’s supernatural nature for as long as I could manage. But eventually, awe and wonder overruled my fear. There is nothing so intoxicating to the scientific mind as the weird and unfamiliar.