Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine Page 4

  “Anyone but him!” Francis Moulton cut in, and the two of them laughed.

  “Such a strange moment,” said Hatty, with a smile and a shake of her head. “It was like a rush of familiarity, but not quite the same. Not the feeling that I knew this man, but the feeling that I ought to know him. That my love somehow belonged to this perfect stranger and my heart’s true home was a place it was now forbidden ever to go.”

  “And you, Mr. Moulton?” I inquired.

  “Well, I was just sitting there feeling down in the dumps. I wasn’t even there for the wedding. I’m a Boston inventor, you see. I’d come to England because I’ve devised a new machine for weaving cotton into cloth, similar to your Raveling Nancy.”

  “Except it’s three times as fast,” Hatty interjected, supportively.

  “And it doesn’t break as much,” Francis added.

  “Or even cost as much.”

  “Or pull quite so many people’s arms off. It’s done quite well for me in America and I suppose I’ve already made my fortune. But… I don’t know… Honestly, I thought it would do very well here, as soon as the English manufacturers saw how much better it is. But nobody wanted anything other than a Raveling Nancy and I was taking it a bit personal, I guess.”

  “I suppose we Englishmen can be a bit set in our ways,” I admitted.

  “So I was just moping in the church,” Francis continued, “and I looked up and I saw this girl and I just… I realized that it didn’t matter! My machine didn’t matter! If I’d come all the way to England and didn’t sell a damned one, that didn’t matter. I should count myself lucky—count myself blessed—because I’d seen her! I didn’t know who she was, but I knew she was perfect for me. But then I looked around a bit more and realized I was watching her get married. I didn’t know what to do! So I grabbed a slip of paper out of my pocket and scribbled down a note. And she was looking at me, just like I was looking at her, so I waved my note a bit so she could see it.”

  “And when I came down the aisle, I dropped my bouquet.”

  “And I just slipped the note right in there and went back to my hotel to think of her. God, I was just on the edge of going crazy! I don’t know what I’d have done if she hadn’t come. But not two hours later, there was this knock on my door and…”

  “And there I was!” said Hatty, beaming.

  “Your souls had become entwined,” I noted, then fired a rather hard look at Holmes and added, “Just incredibly, powerfully and—one is tempted to suspect—irreversibly entwined.” Holmes gave me a guilty little shrug. “Well done, Holmes,” I said. “Well done, indeed.”

  “What was that?” Hatty wondered.

  “Never mind. The important thing now is to find a way for this situation to be corrected.”

  Hatty took Francis’s hand in her own, gave it a firm shake and said, “No. This particular situation will not be corrected. It is correct, Dr. Watson, and I shall not allow it to be changed in any way.”

  “That’s right! You tell him!” crowed Holmes, through a mouthful of toast. He looked quite happy to settle in and cheer on his chosen side. Which, it appeared, was not me.

  “But, Lady St. Simon,” I said—and Hatty bristled at the name, “Scotland Yard is treating this as a disappearance. They’re on the case. There is simply no way to stop them revealing what has happened.”

  From the corner of her mouth, she growled, “All this new education that’s been thrust on me has taught me the value of investing in social infrastructures, so perhaps I’ll just have to buy Scotland Yard and have them all arrest themselves.”

  “Madam, I have no doubt that in many countries, your money could solve this problem, but England is no such place. Propriety matters! The idea of what is right matters!”

  “Not to me,” she said. “At last I have found happiness and I am disinclined to surrender it so easily.”

  “She’s right, by God!” Francis cried. “Lose Hatty? Never! I’ll die first!”

  “Well put!” Holmes cried, spattering the tablecloth in a light dusting of soggy crumbs.

  “All right,” I said. “All right. Clearly, something must be done. We simply need to take some time and find a way to—”

  Yet time was to be a luxury we could not afford. At that moment there was a knock at our door, which—since I had failed to fasten it properly—slowly swung open. Just behind it stood Lord St. Simon, looking disinterestedly down at his shoes. “I hope you gentlemen will forgive the intrusion,” he said, “but when I was here earlier, I left in such a hurry I fear I forgot my…”

  He looked up, saw the scene before him, let his jaw dangle stuporously for a moment or two, then breathlessly concluded, “…wife.”

  “Ha!” shouted Holmes, leaping from his seat and triumphantly directing my attention to the empty place setting. “Five!”

  Hatty’s face lit to its most defiant red. “I am not your wife!”

  “By God, you are!”

  “She says she isn’t and she’s not!” Mr. Moulton thundered.

  “She’s really not,” Holmes added and—to my chagrin—he had this peaceful, happy little look on his face as if all our problems had just dissolved.

  What this sudden source of relief might be, I could not guess, so I leapt between our first two guests and our third and spluttered, “Wait now, everybody! I appeal for calm. Let’s not say anything that might get anyone arrested or hanged or burned at the stake, shall we?”

  “Quite right,” Holmes agreed. “Hatty, Francis, I think we should be honest.”

  “Honest?” Francis wondered.

  “Yes,” said Holmes, and the hint of a victorious smile began to play about the left corner of his mouth, “about Hatty Doran’s first wedding. Remember? In California?”

  “What?” said Francis Moulton, Lord St. Simon, Lady St. Simon and I. Yet, after that first wave of surprise, I realized it was perfect. Just perfect. Yes, I could sometimes be dismissive of Holmes’s intelligence but I could just as often fail to give him the credit he was due. From time to time my friend could be counted on to come up with the perfect whopper.

  Hatty Doran’s face flicked from an expression of perfect incredulity to one of sudden hope. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh, yes! That’s it! We should… We should be honest.”

  I appeal for calm.

  “Eh?” said Francis Moulton.

  “About how you and I met in the mining camps outside Sutter’s Mill,” Hatty prompted, “long before I ever met Lord St. Simon. And how we got married.”

  Moulton’s face lit up with joy. Lord St. Simon’s expressed more than a little doubt. “This man,” he said, indicating Moulton’s rather costly clothing, “was a miner?”

  “Oh, well… I mean…” stammered Moulton, who appeared to have little experience generating fabrications, “sure I look pretty put-together now, but… in my youth… Grrr! Pickaxes: I love ’em! Right?”

  “But no,” insisted Lord St. Simon. “Hatty was never married! Aloysius Doran was quite clear on the matter.”

  “Oh we never told Daddy,” said Hatty.

  “How could they?” Holmes interjected.

  “Right, because, you see… well, Daddy had just made his fortune. And Francis still hadn’t, so…”

  “So people might think I was only marrying her for her money!” Francis said, shaking his fists and thrusting his enormous American chin a bit too close to the unfortunate array of features Lord St. Simon called a face.

  I placed a hand gently atop one of his fists, pressed it back down to his side and said, “Which nobody would do, of course.”

  “Right,” Hatty said. “So we got married in secret and agreed that Francis would go seek his fortune in Boston, then return to claim me.”

  “Which I totally did,” Francis confirmed. “That’s where I got these clothes and this accent and invented a really good machine for making cotton cloth that the stupid, stupid manufacturers around here ought to take a closer look at!”

  “Sure,” agreed Hatty. �
�Only then he never made it back to get me.”

  “Why?” Lord St. Simon asked.

  “Er…” said Hatty.

  “Um…” said Francis.

  “On his return trip, he was captured by Apaches…” said Holmes. Hatty and Francis shot him smiles of relief and gratitude.

  “…on elephants,” Holmes added. The young lovers’ features fell.

  “Elephants?” Lord St. Simon bellowed. “But elephants are not native to Americ—”

  “And a good thing, too,” Hatty interrupted, “or the famous elephant raiders of the Apache nation would surely have crushed the entire USA before it even got started!”

  Egad, she was a gifted liar.

  “They were from a circus!” Francis declared. “The Apaches had previously raided a circus, you see.”

  “Right! And then cut a swathe of destruction from Philadelphia to Santa Fe!”

  “Sure! Oh! It was bad. You should have seen it.”

  “The US Cavalry was helpless!”

  “Because horses are afraid of elephants, you know.”

  “I have read that somewhere, I think,” Lord St. Simon admitted.

  “And after the raid, I thought Francis was dead,” said Hatty.

  “But… but wouldn’t you check?” Lord St. Simon wondered. “Wouldn’t you assume him to be alive, in the absence of a body?”

  “In a normal raid, perhaps,” Hatty countered, “but this was an elephant raid. Whole wagon-train smashed. Bits of bodies everywhere. So hard to tell which piece went to which person. Whole families reduced to gobs of dusty paste.”

  “So she thought I was dead, when in fact I was merely captured.”

  “But after a time, he escaped.”

  “Sure. Um… One night as the Apaches were preparing a scouting party, I attached myself to the underside of one of the… you know… elephants…”

  “And then, that night he rolled off into the bushes by the side of the trail and made his way back to me,” Hatty declared happily, then added, “Except I was already gone.”

  “Yes. She was here,” Francis agreed. “So I tracked her down and caught up with her in the church.”

  “You can imagine my surprise, Lord St. Simon,” Hatty said, placing her hand to her chest in well-fabricated distress. “So of course I had to sneak out and find out where matters stood.”

  “A situation which is, of course, all too clear,” I said, laying an apologetic hand on Lord St. Simon’s shoulder. “As a doctor and a person who pretends to know a great deal about matrimonial law, I can assure you that Hatty Doran’s first marriage—though foreign and secret—is binding. Your marriage—through no fault of anybody’s—was never valid. Though it may have seemed so for a time, there is not, nor ever was there, such a person as Lady St. Simon. So sorry, old chap.”

  Lord St. Simon tilted on his heels a moment, then stammered, “Can… Can any of this be verified?”

  “Oh, I suppose,” said Hatty, nervously. “What we’d need would be a marriage certificate from a court in California, dated roughly two years ago…”

  “Ha!” said Holmes, with a dismissive wave. “No problem! I know a fellow.”

  “A fellow?” said Lord St. Simon. “What do you mean? A fellow who can transport the documents from California?”

  “Of course,” said Holmes, smiling broadly. “That’s exactly what I mean. Now, Lord St. Simon, did you notice there are five places set at the table? Doesn’t that make me look awfully clever? Maybe you ought to sit down with us, have a civil supper, and we should all part as friends—victims of that same strange twist of fate that brought us to the brink of disaster, yet ended so well.”

  “Never, sir!” said Lord St. Simon, recoiling. “Stay? Here? Under the roof that has brought so much damage to my person, my reputation and my hopes? I have been injured, sir. I have been shamefully misused and I do not intend to tarry to… Is that cold pheasant?”

  Holmes nodded. “I believe it is.”

  “Well, I am a bit peckish. It’s been a long night, you know. Had to go see Flora down at the Allegro Theater and put things right. I may have forgotten supper in all the commotion. Yes, I might just… I think I’ll try a bit of this…”

  As he spoke, Lord St. Simon piled a plate high with pheasant and vegetables pausing only to mutter, “Oh, is that toast? Just the thing!”

  “Right!” I said, slapping my brow. “Pheasant on toast! That is a dish. Well, propriety is satisfied.”

  Yet Lord St. Simon did not construct the aforementioned delicacy. Instead, he thrust two slices of toast into his pockets, turned from the table and declared, “No, I will not stay in this house of insult! You will be hearing from me! There’s the damage to my family name to be considered. And, of course, the matter of the dowry.”

  Hatty gave a little smirk. “Well… as this was all the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding, perhaps the dowry might be left with the St. Simon family as reparation for their misfortune. Provided, of course, my previous marriage is recognized and no further claim is placed upon me.”

  My eyebrows went up and I muttered, “A bit expensive for a near miss, isn’t it?”

  Holmes placed a hand upon my shoulder and said, “Watson, hush.”

  He was right, for Hatty’s words seemed to have a dramatic effect on Lord St. Simon. “Oh?” he said, hopefully, then caught himself and blustered, “I mean, if it lies on that footing, perhaps I must be the better man.”

  With a gigantic smile of fiscal relief on his face, Lord St. Simon better-manned down our steps and out onto Baker Street, meal in hand. I could not help but notice that he set off not in the direction of his home but of the Allegro Theater, where Miss Flora Millar’s late show would soon begin. Holmes watched him go with a knowing grin.

  “Well,” he said softly, “we shan’t be getting that plate back, I would think. But never mind. Watson, fetch down that bottle of Tokay, won’t you? I think it’s time to raise a glass to new hopes and fresh prospects. I hope you won’t take it amiss if I don’t join you. You three have a toast and I shall have… toast.”

  And that is where the matter came to rest. Or… it would have. If I’d been a wiser man. If I hadn’t been about to make one of the worst decisions of my life.

  You see, a number of clues had been presented to me that day that had nothing to do with the adventure at hand, but with one I cared about a great deal more.

  Where was Adler? Where was Moriarty? What were their true natures, their goals? I’d sought this information time and again, but had little success. Perhaps it was time to try a new tactic…

  What had Holmes said? Prophetic dreams? Revealed secrets? My recent bout of vivid dreaming had come because Irene Adler had dosed me with a magical toxin. And—in my previous adventure of My Grave Ritual—I had accidentally induced visions by smoking part of a shredded Persian sorcerer. But now… If magic worked in any way like common drugs, would the effect not be more potent if the compound was introduced directly into my bloodstream? And had Holmes not showed me a device capable of that exact function, only a few hours before?

  Perhaps it would all come to nothing. I was no magician, after all. But it was worth a try, wasn’t it?

  After our guests had left, I went to our mantel, to the old Persian slipper filled with the shredded remains of the sorcerer Xantharaxes, and helped myself to a teaspoonful. Then I went to Holmes’s door and—as casually as I could manage—inquired if I might borrow the runcible amphigory. It had captured my curiosity, I explained, and I wished to examine its workings. He was delighted I’d taken an interest. After discreetly closing the door to my room, I put the amphigory on my writing desk, opened my surgical bag, and removed my trusty hypodermic needle.

  Holmes had said a seven percent solution was ideal…

  I rolled up my sleeve, found a vein, and got to work. In no time at all, I had an ounce of my own blood heating over the candle. I watched in fascination as the shreds of Xantharaxes I threw in lost their shape and disappeared in
to the liquid. Then I sucked the solution back up into my needle, gritted my teeth, and stepped into a strange new world.

  I still remember my dream, that first night. Amazing. But not particularly useful.

  I dreamt I was a cow. There was a moment of panic when I discovered I had hooves instead of feet and four legs rather than two. I almost toppled until I realized I knew how to balance. It was an indwelling knowledge, born of simply being who I was. By the time I awoke the next morning, I had a fairly complete idea of what it was to be another creature, although not a creature I’d ever wondered much about. Still, I had found strange comfort in the slow and rolling progress of bovine thought. How wonderful the sensation of hooves sinking into soft loam. How satisfying the experience of belching up half-digested grass from my reticulum, chewing for a bit, then swallowing it down into my omasum for further processing.

  Most of the dreams were like that, in those nights of experimentation. Vivid. Illuminating. Rather useless. I was hardly hot on the trail of Moriarty and Adler. Not until the third night, when I at last caught a glimpse of the knowledge I desired.

  On the third night, I beheld the toymaker.

  THE TOYMAKER

  FROM THE DREAM JOURNAL OF DR. JOHN WATSON

  THE SHOP IS DANK AND UNFINISHED. NO TILES UPON THE floor, no carpet, only worn planks of untreated wood. There is only one window, through which London’s dirty afternoon light is cast upon the rows of shelves and—though I have not seen it—the dream comes with a knowledge of how this shop advertises itself to the world. A simple sign above the door with a single word carved into it: TOYS.

  And there are toys. Tops and velveteen plushes and wooden blocks, piled with no particular care upon dusty shelves. But then, as one steps further in… clockwork figures. Magnificent automatons, crafted with exquisite care—their gleaming metal gears cut by hand to precisely the proper shapes. Here is a bear that will beg for food, when his key is wound. Here is a shining metal queen who dances with a grinning goblin. And then, a strange rush of familiarity! Here is my circus tableau! The one Holmes and I took from the rooms of Percy Trevelyan on our second adventure together. I had often wound its spring and admired the mastery of its workings. Now, I behold its maker.