The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles Page 7

  “Holmes… Holmes?” came a hollow, reedy voice, quickly followed by the whoosh-and-thump of the street door being blown open and crashing against the wall.

  “Holmes?” called the wind.

  And I had the sudden realization that I wished to speak to the exact same person. “Hoooooooolmes!” I leapt from my bed and into Holmes’s chamber. “Holmes, the wind is asking for you!”

  “Well, what does it want?” he asked, and tutted at the intrusion.

  “Er… I don’t know. I haven’t inquired.”

  “But won’t you, Watson? I am somewhat indisposed.”

  This was true. Holmes remained in feeble shape. He spent his days and nights propped up in his bed, begging for toast and soup, slowly recomposing.

  “No, Holmes, you don’t understand: it is not normal for the wind to speak.”

  “I am surprised at you, Watson. Afraid of a little wind…”

  “Also, it seems to have opened the front door.”

  This, at last, seemed to pique his interest. “Hmm… So it seems unlikely to be just the wind, then.”

  As if in answer, there came a heavy tunk, tunk, tunking up the stairs, like someone thumping the steps with a heavy oaken staff. The sound drew ever closer to our own door, accompanied by a scraping, like a handful of sticks being drawn across a wall.

  “Best get out of bed, then,” Holmes grumbled. “Dashed impertinence… All hours… Honestly…”

  “Holmes? Holmes, I need your help,” the voice moaned, from just outside our door. I believed it for not one second. Though it still sounded like wind being drawn through some unseen crevice, its tone was wheedling, mocking—exactly the way a lion would taunt a wildebeest, “Oh no, please don’t hurt me, Mr. Harmless Herbivore!”

  “Get the door, Watson,” Holmes suggested.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s just such a long way over there, you know. I’m really not at my best. I’ll just stand here in the hall and speak to… whatever that is.”

  “Help meeeeeeeeee.” Tunk, tunk, tunk. Scrrrrrrrrrrrrreck, click, click.

  “Um… Holmes, are you sure that’s wise?”

  “You are perfectly safe, Watson, I assure you.”

  Despite my companion’s history of frequently, incorrectly assuring my safety, I crept closer to the door. Now there came a rattling knock and, “Holmes? I need your help.”

  I looked back at him and let my eyes ask, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes,” replied his twice-flapping hand.

  I sucked in breath. I gritted my teeth. I opened the door.

  There was nothing there.

  Then the scarecrow leaned in from his hiding place beside the door and grabbed me by the throat. He smelled musty and wet. His clothes hung dank and weathered across his fence-pole frame. His fingers were dried scratchy sticks, his face a grinning pumpkin stuck atop a rough-hewn pole. In its rictus smile there was something that closely resembled triumph. I cannot answer to its effectiveness at frightening crows, but it worked pretty well on me.

  “Aaaaaigh!” I cried.

  “Aaaaaigh!” it agreed, but in a high-pitched, mocking whine that left no doubt as to its low opinion of my character. I froze, forgetting to struggle for a moment, stunned by the impertinence of the beast. If someone must be strangled, why then, someone must be strangled, yet I see no reason or excuse to do it so disrespectfully.

  I paused, unsure whether to fight for my life, or reproach the thing for its churlishness. As I dithered, the air around me exploded with purple light. Three bolts of violet flame howled past me in irregular arcs and slammed into my scarecrow assailant. The first struck him dead center and cracked his wooden backbone in two. The second smote away one of his arms and sent it clattering down the stairs. The third passed so close to my cheek that I feared it had singed my whiskers away (and I proved to be half right, for though the morning would reveal that cheek to be hairless, the stubble had not burned, it had rotted). This final blast caught the scarecrow right in the middle of his brow. His head exploded into purple-flaming wads of pumpkin-glop, which spattered themselves all across the opposite wall and the front of my nightshirt. The wrecked scarecrow collapsed backwards into a corner and moved no more. With a gasp, I set about the task of stomping out the little spatters of flame, lest they find purchase and burn down our home.

  “There,” said Holmes, with an air of exhausted finality, his outstretched fingers still smoking. “That’s all settled. Back to bed.”

  He turned back towards his room, but was interrupted by my observation: “Whhuaaaaaaauah! Aiigh!”

  “Watson! Hush! Do you want to wake Mrs. Hudson?” His tone turned piteous. “Please, please do not wake Mrs. Hudson. Oh, I don’t know how I could tolerate her at the moment.”

  “But… what was that thing?”

  “Oh, you know, just one of those… pumpkin… scarecrow… monster… thingies. They’re quite common; you read about them in the paper all the time.”

  “No you don’t!”

  “Well, of course you do. I think one of them… oh, I don’t know… robbed a bank last week or something.”

  He was edging back towards his room, eager to end this conversation. Yet I was unwilling to let him go.

  “Well known, is it? In all the papers? What are they called, then, if everybody is so familiar with them?”

  “Oh. You know… pumpkin… scarething… with crows… Pumpcrow! That was it: merely a pumpcrow, Watson.”

  “Pumpcrow?” I howled at him. “Pumpcrow?”

  But it was too late; Holmes fell down upon his mattress and there he lay, insensible to the world. Shaking with anger and no small amount of residual fear, I turned and stomped off to my own room.

  * * *

  When I awoke… Well, no… that is a lie. When I decided it was time to stop fearfully huddling under my blankets, I found Holmes still sprawled out upon his bed. Feeling that I needed some air, I hurriedly dressed and stepped out.

  There, just outside our door, amidst the wreckage of our pumpcrow assailant, stood Mrs. Hudson. She did not look well pleased by the morning’s discovery. Lacking an explanation, I realized my only hope lay in taking the offensive. Even as she opened her mouth to begin her vicious harangue, I tutted, “Mrs. Hudson, I realize that this is your home and that decorating choices outside my rented chambers are not mine to make. Nevertheless, madam, Holmes and I do business here and I think we would be most appreciative if, in the future, you could maintain an entryway decor that is more welcoming to our visitors!”

  I harrumphed past her, down the stairs and out onto Baker Street. Once there, I let my feet carry me where they would. I had no destination, only troubled thoughts.

  Holmes could not stay in London; that much was clear. He had too many enemies and too many friends. Moriarty’s men and the occasional pumpcrow seemed to have no difficulty determining his whereabouts and I could think of no better time to strike at Holmes than now. If word got out that he was enfeebled, the previous evening’s assault might prove to be only the opening act of a greater tragedy. What would stop Grogsson and Lestrade coming round as soon as they got a case that stumped them, to quite interrupt Holmes’s recovery? And clients: was there any reason to suppose that they would cease their pleas, just because Holmes was mending? Oh, and it was nothing short of miraculous that Mrs. Hudson had yet to discover that Holmes had returned to her care. Likely, it was only her extreme indifference that kept her from asking after him. If she discovered his current state, what would she do? Panic? Evict us? Call an exorcist? The more I thought it over, the more I realized: if a moment’s peace were on the cards for Warlock Holmes, it would not be found on Baker Street.

  Here, let me pause to mention one of Holmes’s most infuriating traits: his remarkable good fortune. Let us suppose Holmes were in the mood to read the newspaper, but had none. He might go to the window to catch a breeze and while there, he might stretch his hand out to check for rain. As soon as he did, a cart-driver on the stre
et below would suffer a sudden heart attack. His cart—loaded with innumerable panes of window-glass—would veer astray, plunging through man and horse and flower-girl alike, tipping glass left and right and generally shredding half the people on the street until it at last collided with a newsstand, slicing the proprietor into several dozen meat strips and propelling hundreds of newspapers high into the air. One of which would land, neat as you like, in Holmes’s extended palm.

  My own luck was identical, except that instead of a newspaper landing in my outstretched hand, it would be a disembodied loop of the newspaperman’s abdominal viscera. This would surely be followed by all the surviving people on the street crying out, “Tragedy! Catastrophe! Oh please, is there a doctor present who wouldn’t mind patching up our several dozen wounded for no financial compensation?”

  In those early days, I still supposed this to be blind luck. I had yet to realize that it was in fact demons, doing subtle, unbidden favors for Holmes. I should have known better sooner, as is evidenced by what happened next. The exact second I decided that Holmes must leave London, I caught my walking stick between two cobblestones, slipped sideways and tipped bodily into the fellow to my right. I hardly managed to stop the two of us from tumbling into the gutter. I was beginning to formulate an apology, when I caught a glimpse of who it was I had upset and immediately snapped to salute. I would not have thought I served long enough for such things to become habit, but there I was: spine straight, fingers to my brow, shouting, “Sir! Colonel Hayter, sir!”

  The old gentleman blinked twice, squinted at me a moment, then said, “Oh… hullo… that’s Watson, isn’t it?”

  “Sir!”

  “At ease, Watson. No need for such formalities. I’m retired, you know. Would have thought you would be too, after that gunshot wound.”

  “I am, sir. Only… I suppose you surprised me. Dreadfully sorry. Where are you bound, Colonel?”

  “Oh! I thought I’d take a walk in the park, only I can’t find the damned thing. It has to be around here somewhere.”

  “Just around the corner, sir. Shall I see you to it?”

  “That would be capital, Watson, capital!”

  So I led my former commander back past my rooms, towards Regent’s Park. Though it had been only a few years since I’d seen him last, he appeared notably more gray, more bent. It made me sad to see him so; I’d always liked the man.

  “How is it that you find yourself in London, sir?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I just wandered here, I think.”

  “I thought you had that country place down in Surrey, near… Where was it?”

  “Reigate! Reigate is its name! God damn the place! God damn!” He shouted this with such sudden passion that half the street turned to stare at him. “The devil made that place, Watson, which I would not have minded, if he had not then deeded it to me!”

  “But I had always thought the idea of retiring to be a country squire was rather… nice.”

  “Did you know, Watson, did you know that the snow stayed unseasonably late this year? And yet, and yet, the lilac buds came two days earlier? Did you know that? I did! Why? Because it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in two whole years! Hellish place!”

  “Oh. Well, perhaps invite some visitors?” I suggested.

  “I tried to. I tried. ‘Come down to the country,’ I said. That’s what Londoners do, isn’t it? They get sick and go to the country to recuperate. Set up the whole south wing as an infirmary. Know what I got? My milksop, fart-wit nephew came down because he had the flu. Moped around for a week or so, before he realized just how boring Surrey is, then off he ran. Then my niece got ‘the vapors’ after reading a saucy French novel. She only lasted two days and I can’t say I miss her. Oh, I want a real patient, Watson! A man with stories to tell! With scars! With some horrid tropical disease that’s slowly dissolving him, you know?”

  I stopped, stunned, in the middle of the street. “So, what you want most in the world is to provide an out-of-London getaway to an odd, interesting person who has horrible physical afflictions?”

  “In a perfect world: yes. But you know, we don’t always get what we want, do we, Watson?”

  “You might, sir. I really think you might.”

  * * *

  I smuggled Holmes out by night, with a blanket over his head, into a waiting carriage with the curtains drawn. To be caught with a corpse in one’s possession is one thing; to be caught with a corpse that walks around and asks for soup is quite another. Colonel Hayter met us at the door of his home, as we had agreed, and helped me spirit Holmes out of the sight of the driver and into the infirmary. When I was sure we were unobserved, I handed Hayter the corner of the blanket and allowed him to open Holmes up like a Christmas present.

  “Good God! He’s marvelous!”

  “Thank you, good sir,” said Holmes, with a cadaverous bow. “You seem to be a most impressive gentleman, yourself.”

  From that instant, the two of them were fast friends. Their chief entertainment was in declaring boredom—a practice at which they sometimes tried to best one another, or else they served as a sympathetic ear to the other’s travails.

  “Do you see that laurel branch out there? Do you see it?” Colonel Hayter asked, on the third morning after our arrival. He was spending far too much time with Holmes, if indeed this trip were for rest and recovery’s sake. Yet his presence so delighted my friend that, even as a doctor, I felt it was not an unwelcome thing.

  “I think I see the one you mean,” said Holmes.

  “Well, it’s awful! Look at it! The way it droops! No good will come of a branch like that, and no ill either! Nothing will, because nothing ever happens to it. Look: nothing is happening! Watch!”

  “Why, it’s not doing a thing! Just hanging off that tree,” Holmes agreed.

  “Indeed, sir!” thundered Hayter. “Not contributing, not pulling its weight… What purpose does it serve? I tell you, Mr. Holmes, nothing ever happens in Surrey! Nothing!”

  After the briefest pause, he added, “Well… apart from the burglary, I mean.”

  I sat forward in my chair and gave my former commander a hard look. Before coming, I had made him agree that no news that might disturb Holmes should be mentioned in his presence. The very last thing I wanted was for my recovering friend to be presented with a case to solve. Realizing his misstep, Hayter stammered, “Nothing to interest you fellows, I am sure. Somebody broke into old Acton’s house—into his library—and stole a few things. Nothing of value, just some old grimoire…”

  “What?” I cried, flinging my newspaper to the ground. “Not only have I forbidden this very topic, but… well… it strains credulity! Why would an aging country squire just happen to have an ancient book of magic lying around?”

  Hayter gave a guilty shrug. “There’s not much else to do.”

  Fortunately, though it seemed the perfect lure for Holmes’s interest, he failed to take the bait. “Ugh,” he moaned. “Dreadful. Dull. Let me tell you: most grimoires are filled with utter drivel. Just tedious sorcerers, droning on and on about their favorite subject: themselves.”

  “Yes… yes I suppose so,” Hayter said. “Acton lost nothing but that and an old druidic dagger. He says it was originally used for human sacrifice, but came to serve as his letter opener.”

  “Ha!” Holmes scoffed. “He’s lying. Don’t you see? Probably keeps it around in case he ever needs to do himself in—too bored to keep on living, I suspect.”

  “Just so, just so,” said Hayter with visible relief at Holmes’s indifference. “Those were the only items taken. And some string.”

  “String?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of string?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The usual kind: very small rope.”

  “But why should a burglar want string?” Holmes wondered. He was sitting up in bed now, looking perplexed. “And why should he want another man’s string, enough that he breaks into a hou
se to get it?”

  “Holmes, this is no business of ours,” I insisted, with a warning tone.

  “But, Watson, I can’t think of any reason he’d need this man Acton’s string in particular,” Holmes mused, “unless he were using it to bind something of Acton’s. Or to mark off an area he wished to use or possess, which belonged to Acton… I don’t suppose this Acton fellow is involved in any property disputes, is he?”

  “Er… well… he is,” admitted Hayter, shrinking from my withering gaze. “The other magnates of these parts—Mr. Cunningham and his son, Alec—are constantly bickering over this disused old windmill that they say belongs to them instead of Acton. It is a baseless claim. Honestly, I think they only pursue it so they’ll have something to stave off the boredom.”

  “Ha! I shouldn’t wonder! Dullest place I’ve ever been. So quiet… stagnant, even.”

  I was relieved to see my friend settle back down into bed. Hayter’s disclaimer might have been enough to quash Holmes’s budding interest if one of the neighbors had not chosen that very moment to come running across the front lawn crying, “Help! Colonel Hayter! Come quickly! Murder! Murder! Oh, it’s the best thing ever!”

  In a flash, that customary British military briskness reinfused itself into Hayter’s aging spine. His eyes gleamed. His back straightened. He practically kicked the French window open, leveled the stem of his pipe at the approaching man and demanded, “Is this true? Has something happened in Surrey?”

  “I know! It’s quite unaccountable, but no mistake…” the man began, but he did not finish, for his gaze fell upon Holmes. He stopped, mouth still open, blinked.

  “Eyes on me, lad, eyes on me!” Hayter insisted. “Now, who is it you think’s been murdered, eh?”

  “Oh! Bill Kirwan, sir.”

  “Young William? The Cunninghams’ coachman?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s the one. Everyone’s in a right stir. We all… Pardon me, Colonel, but what’s the matter with that gentleman?”

  He pointed at Holmes, but Hayter blustered, “Never you mind, Randal, never you mind. You just go round the front and wait for me there. I’ll fetch my boots and we’ll see if someone’s really been murdered or what!”