A Study in Brimstone Page 8

  “I think we shall soon know,” Warlock said, smiling, indicating the clock. It had just struck noon and, in a moment, there came a scratching at the door. Well, it began as a scratching, but unaccountably transformed itself to a knock partway through. I listened in horror as the noise, which had begun at the lower corner of the door, slowly worked its way upwards until it was a pounding, just above the knob.

  “Come in, Wiggles,” said Holmes, “and report.”

  The door swung wide and there stood the urchin, grinning. “Afternoon, sir. Pleased to say we’ve found ’im.”

  “Capital!” Holmes cheered, crossing the room to deposit a handful of coins in Wiggles’s hands. “Here’s for the fare, and a little extra. Have him come round at half past one. Not here; he’ll recognize the address. We’ll use Grogsson’s place. You know where it is?”

  “That I do, sir. Half past one,” Wiggles replied, and was gone.

  Warlock walked to the prone figure of Grogsson and mused, “Hmm… He won’t like us going to his house without him. And I hardly trust him here. What do you think, Watson, is Torg fit to walk a mile or so?”

  I leaned over him, to assess. He was becoming responsive; his muscle movements were still unsteady, but voluntary, and his groans had taken on a melodramatic quality (the big baby).

  “Well, he’s been shot in the chest twice at point-blank range, and had a dose of deadly poison, all before lunchtime. Yet still… yes, I think he’s fit to walk.”

  Warlock smiled and we all set to the task of getting the ponderous bulk of Torg Grogsson back up on his feet. As we grunted and struggled, Warlock noted, “Egad, Watson, you’re right: lunchtime. I quite forgot.”

  I laughed. “Perhaps we can stop at a bakery and get an English muffin, to eat on the way.”

  “Well and good for you three,” Lestrade complained.

  “I don’t suppose they’ll have toast and soup?” Holmes wondered.

  “An English muffin is toast. Round toast,” Lestrade said. “I don’t even eat food and I know that.”

  I paused a moment to reassemble my service revolver, while the others donned their coats. Thus armed and prepared, we set off to catch a murderer. On the way out, Grogsson trod on the dog.

  “Told you so,” said Holmes.

  10

  THE LIGHTEST SCENT OF LAVENDER GRACED THE AIR. I sat upon a tasteful velvet settee, utterly in awe. Grogsson owned a proper house on the edge of town—and by proper, I mean immaculate. No speck of dust could be seen. Framed prints of Europe’s finest ballet dancers, male and female, adorned the walls. No other subject was featured in any of Grogsson’s artwork. He even had a pair of Marie Taglioni’s shoes, preserved in a glass display case. Warlock and Lestrade had known of this predilection, but it was my first time in Grogsson’s house. Grogsson stared at me with a look that promised utter physical destruction if I breathed a word to anyone, or dared to mock. In fact, I had no desire to cast fun, but rather felt a swell of sympathy for the hulking detective. Ballet dancers are graceful, delicate, refined and beautiful. In order to make the list complete, one need only add “well spoken” and preface the whole thing with “Here are five things Torg Grogsson will never be.”

  Warlock rummaged about in the attic for a few minutes, returning with a battered trunk. This he took out onto the front step and filled with large, decorative rocks from the garden. Lestrade and I helped him position it on the floor of the sitting room, near the door, as if Grogsson had packed for a trip and was preparing to depart. After that, there was naught to do but sit and wait.

  It was agony.

  I had never been present at the apprehension of a murderer before and it was not the sort of thing I was capable of approaching calmly. Lestrade looked eager. Holmes grinned like a schoolboy; his enemy was boredom and that nemesis would not be showing its face this day.

  As it approached quarter past one, Lestrade became ever more bitter and agitated. As twenty past neared, Warlock turned to him and said, “Vladislav, my friend, I think perhaps we ought to chain you up, a bit. Just for safety, you know.”

  Lestrade made an awful face but nodded his agreement, saying, “I do not know if I could trust myself, if I had to lay hands on a man with blood like that. Grogsson and I both have irons.”

  “You fellows ought to try this type,” Holmes said, drawing a pair of shiny handcuffs from his coat pocket. “I find them to be light, portable, and magnificently quick to fasten. Then again, I’m saving them for our friend. Let’s use yours.”

  Holmes clasped one pair of cuffs around Lestrade’s ankles so he might not run. The other he fastened to Lestrade’s left hand and then the wooden arm of the chair he sat on. I can’t say why, but this put me quite on edge. Perhaps I was simply unaccustomed to seeing people clapped in chains. More pragmatically, I was sorry to lose Lestrade’s help. The walk had done Grogsson no good, so I had every impression that Warlock and I would have to face the murderer alone. Though each passing day improved me, I was still frail. I had my pistol, but I had never shot a man and—though I could not recall the specific wording—I was fairly sure the Hippocratic oath took a dim view of such things. Holmes I still had little faith in. Despite Lestrade’s warning and the shadows that bound Grogsson, I could not picture Holmes as anything more than a well-meaning but bumbling buffoon. I steeled my nerve as best I could and waited.

  Just before the half-hour, we heard hooves in the street outside. I placed myself with my back to the wall near the front door. It was all I could do not to draw my pistol. I never liked guns, even before my disastrous encounter with one in Afghanistan, but found I yearned for its comforting presence in my hand.

  When the door opened I practically jumped through the ceiling, but it was only Wiggles. It was fortunate that I hadn’t drawn my weapon. Such was my fright, I might well have blown the poor urchin’s face off.

  “Afternoon, Wiggles,” Holmes said, beaming. “I wonder, would you ask the driver to come help me with my trunk?”

  Wiggles disappeared down the path and in a few moments came scampering back, with the murderer at his heels. I meant to avert my gaze, lest he recognize me from the night before, but I could not help staring. When he came through the door, I saw a man transformed. He was wearing men’s clothes this time, but that was not the chief change in him. Gone were his hate and his fury, replaced with a light stride and a wonder-struck torpor, as if he had just seen the world for the first time this morning, and found it beautiful. In his amiable daze, the killer failed to notice me. He stepped up to Holmes with a friendly nod and reached down to grasp the trunk.

  In a flash, Holmes had the cuffs on him, one around his wrist and one about the handle of the luggage. The surprised murderer recoiled and tried to run, only to find himself chained to a hundred-pound trunk.

  “Gentlemen,” crowed Holmes, turning to address the room, “allow me to present the murderer of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Strangerson!”

  One should never stop to count the spoils before the battle is done. Though his eyes flooded with rage and fear, the killer’s mind remained unclouded. He simply reached down and unfastened the trunk’s single clasp. He tipped it forward, sending a dozen dirty rocks clattering onto Grogsson’s pristine floor.

  “You didn’t lock it?” I shouted to Warlock, who had time to shrug slightly before the murderer swung the empty trunk at his head. Warlock collapsed against the wall, blood streaming down his face. The killer turned for the door. I stood to block his escape, but I might have saved myself the trouble. He put his shoulder into me as he passed, knocking me aside as if I were a man of straw. I wound up on the floor, half indoors, half out. Holmes was shouting something.

  “The cab! Watson! Shoot the cab!”

  My gun was under me, stuck in my coat. I struggled up to one knee and yanked it clumsily from my pocket. It occurred to me to wonder what effect one pistol round might work upon a cab, but I had no time to ask. The killer was already on the garden path and nearly at the street. I knew I ought to
shoot the horse, but the animal was blameless and it seemed unfair he should die for his master’s sins. I resolved not to aim my first shot at him and squeezed the trigger with the cab in my sights. I felt the Webley buck in my hands and heard its report ring through the neighborhood. An instant later, the front of the cab exploded in a flash of purple flame. The horse must have been even more shocked than I was; it bolted down the street, dragging the ruins of its harness with it. The explosion had freed the animal from the cab, which lay sprawled in the road, with one wheel crushed and the cabin smashed wide open.

  For the second time in less than twenty seconds, I was knocked to the ground—much harder this time. Grogsson had roused himself. He later admitted that he had been perfectly happy to let Holmes and me handle things, until he saw what the killer had done to his nice clean floor. His frailty forgotten, Grogsson stormed past like a maddened yak, with Warlock close behind, clutching his bleeding nose and shouting, “Alive! Torg! We want him alive!”

  Though he might have preferred rougher alternatives, Grogsson mastered himself enough to obey. He overtook the killer just as he sprang back from his stricken cab. Grogsson grabbed the back of his coat and the belt of his trousers and hoisted him easily off the ground, slamming him roughly into the side of the wrecked cab. The blow was enough to daze the killer, who went limp, the empty trunk dangling from his wrist. Warlock cheered. Grogsson roared in triumph. I might have joined them, if I had not been checking each of my teeth with my tongue, wondering how many would fall out later.

  As soon as he recovered from the shock of being thrown against his cab by Grogsson, the killer held up his free hand in a gesture of surrender and said, “Enough. You have me.”

  Warlock removed the cuff that bound the trunk to the murderer’s wrist and used it to fasten the man’s hands together. This was not enough for Lestrade, who came down squarely in favor of binding him, head to foot. Having been released from his own bondage, Lestrade suggested we also use the other two pairs of cuffs—one around the prisoner’s ankles, and the third between the other two, locking him in a bent-over position. Then, he said, we should chain the trunk full of rocks to him again, and drain enough of his delicious, wonderful blood so that he would be too weak to run away.

  “I say, Vladislav, that seems a bit much, doesn’t it?” Holmes asked. “Are we gentlemen, or are we not?”

  “Well… probably not,” Lestrade reasoned. Grogsson nodded that yes, he concurred with this assessment.

  “You’ve no worry of me,” the killer said. “I’ll not run now. Ain’t a point to it. I reckon I’m a deader this time tomorrow, no matter what. I’ll confess all, but when I tell you why I done it, I think you’ll find each of you would have done no different.”

  His account had to wait, however, for at that moment he burst into the most spectacular nosebleed I think I have ever seen. Lestrade went fairly ballistic and had to be restrained by Grogsson. The tiny Romanian would not stop struggling and we eventually had to lock him in the garden shed while we waited for transport. Yet I think things ended happily for Vladislav Lestrade—when our prisoner asked for a cloth to staunch the flow of blood, Holmes handed him a drinking glass instead.

  Wiggles was immediately dispatched with the direction to hire two more hansoms to drive us to Scotland Yard. When these arrived, Warlock insisted that only he and I should be allowed to ride with the killer. He trusted neither Grogsson’s fury nor Lestrade’s thirst. Thus, our two monster friends were banished to the first cab. Holmes, the murderer and I followed in the second. Surprisingly, of the three of us, it was our prisoner who began the questioning.

  “What kind of gun was that?” he asked.

  Holmes smiled. “That depends. First you must tell me who you are and why you expect to die.”

  The killer shrugged and gamely answered, “My name is Jefferson Hope, out of… well… I suppose St. Louis was the last real home I had. That’s in America. I ain’t from here, as I’m sure you know. I followed Enoch and Joseph out here to do ’em in. As to why I ain’t going to be around long… I got cardio-cranial narrative-sensitive exploditis.”

  Holmes turned to me and asked, “Doctor, are you familiar with that affliction?”

  “No,” I replied, “but the language is simple enough. It describes a condition in which some element of a story will cause this man’s head and heart to… explode. That said, I have never heard of such an illness and I doubt its veracity.”

  “I don’t,” said Holmes, respectfully. “Mr. Hope, I’m afraid that you are quite right and not likely to survive much longer. I have always been able to sense impending doom and, if you will forgive my directness, you are ripe with it.”

  “I know it,” Hope said. “I been wishin’ doom on those two so long, I come to have a sense of it my own self.”

  “Why?” Holmes asked. “Why go to such lengths to ensure those two men’s deaths?”

  To my great surprise, the killer burst into tears. It took some moments for him to regain his composure enough to tell his tale.

  PART II

  NOT FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. JOHN WATSON, BUT FROM SOME NEBULOUS, UNDEFINED SOURCE THAT IS SUDDENLY THIRD PERSON AND ALMOST MAKES YOU THINK YOU’VE PICKED UP THE WRONG BOOK

  11

  SOUTH OF CANADA AND NORTH OF MEXICO LIES A LAND many Englishmen do not deign to speak of. For the triple crimes of bloodying our nose, stealing itself from our empire and eventually surpassing us at the industrial revolution that we ourselves started, it has been banished from the thoughts and vocabulary of our more conservative element.

  Towards the western edge of that cursed land, lies a blighted waste called the Mojave. It is as if the hand of the creator, having formed the earth but not yet adorned it with flora and fauna, paused here. Unable to think of anything apt to draw, the immortal architect resolved to complete the rest of the earth first, then come back and finish up.

  Except, he forgot.

  Nothing of consequence lives here. In fact, any life that happens to wander into this sun-blasted hell usually dies before the day is out. This is the place where scorpions go to perish of dehydration.

  Behold the Spring Mountains, unfinished and unadorned, which jut from the empty plain. These are naked heaps of rock, shoved up from the bowels of the earth just so there could be something here. East of them lies an open basin of sand and alkaline dust, an almost endless open expanse of vegas which the Spanish call Las Vegas. It is a place of madness, where the heat and the unending miles of sand have caused delusion in the few travelers who have managed to traverse it and live. Many report ghostly visions. They speak of a city of a million lights, rising from the sand. Some claim to have seen an ebony pyramid, capped in light, some a vast Italian villa that takes the tiny quantity of precious water that exists there and blasts it into the air in intricate patterns for no reason. One gent even insisted he came across a replica of Camelot itself, gone to squalor and disrepair. These reports are all sun-drunk fantasy of course. Such a city would be totally unsustainable. Who would consent to live there but madmen, insatiable gamblers and the Dutch?

  One evening in 1870, this blighted wasteland beheld a rare sight. As daylight faded, a tiny spot of light sprang up upon the plain. It was a campfire. Beside it huddled three dark shapes. Men. Travelers. In those days, anybody who wished to prospect in California had their choice of routes. The wise ones went north, through Oregon Territory, though it was hundreds of miles out of their way. Those foolish few who decided to hurry along the most direct route ended here. These three travelers belonged to the latter kind and were beginning to wish they’d thought better of it when they’d had the chance. They had gathered a pile of the stunted brush that overgrows the plain and set fire to it—as much out of spite as anything. This campfire provided scant relief against the encroaching darkness and the mood of the travelers was strained.

  Joseph Strangerson was the youngest, most handsome, best educated, kindest, most reasonable member of the party, but the novelty of these adv
antages had dried out a thousand miles ago. He was worn to a nub. He sighed. “Feels like I haven’t seen a river this side of a week.”

  “No. Nor no pastry shop for a good while longer,” Enoch Drebber groused, staring with unguarded greed at the dainty pink box that rested upon the lap of their companion.

  Jefferson Hope’s hard eyes fixed him with a warning glare. “Let’s not have no talk like that, Enoch; you a’ready ate yers.”

  Joseph shook his head and kicked a rock into the fire. Enoch, whose temper had been growing shorter and shorter over the last few days, spat, “I sure did an’ it was delicious, too! What the hell kind o’ man wouldn’t eat a donut if he got one? A fool, if y’ask me!”

  “I may be a fool, Enoch Drebber, but not so much that I can’t recognize when I’m holdin’ a good thing. You kin take yer eyes off my pastry now, hear?”

  Strangerson sighed again and sent another rock to the flames, saying, “He’s got a point, Mr. Hope. If you ain’t gonna eat it, you might as well share. Sharing is one of the seven cardinal virtues, you know.”

  “Ain’t never heard of no seven virtues,” Jefferson Hope said, his gaze fixed at the heart of the fire, “jus’ the seven sins. One of ’em’s greed.”

  “Goddamit!” shouted Drebber, springing up. “Eat it! Eat it right now or hand it over!”

  Jefferson Hope’s eyes rose slowly from the flames to clasp Enoch Drebber in their fell grip. “I’ll eat it when I please, Drebber,” he said, in a voice calm and quiet, but loaded with menacing promise, “an’ there ain’t no man nor beast nor god can make me take a bite afore I’m ready. I’m savin’ it.”

  “Calm down, fellers,” Joseph pleaded. “It’s just a damn donut.”

  “No. It ain’t. It’s the bestest, most perfect donut what ever there was. I named her Lucy an’ I love her an’ that’s all there is to it,” Jefferson Hope insisted.