The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles Page 9

  “Er… you’ll what?” I asked. “Holmes, perhaps we ought not make any hasty promises.”

  “Mantoroth! Admit him!” Holmes cried, then he thrust Cunningham backwards with great force. I thought he meant to dash the young man’s brains out against the stone, but Cunningham’s head went right through the rock’s face, as if it were the surface of a pond. To compound this image, Cunningham’s arms began to thrash about like a drowning man’s. He pulled his wrist free of Holmes’s grasp and flailed wildly, smashing Holmes’s exposed cheekbone with the barrel of his pistol. Holmes ignored the blow and resolutely held Cunningham down. Cunningham was in the stone up to his shoulders now, and Holmes was up to his wrist. Soon Cunningham’s strength began to fail. His movements lessened until they were naught but feeble twitches. Finally, Holmes drew him back out of the stone and dropped him. Cunningham fell, first to his knees, then against the millstone, his cheek resting against the now-solid stone. His hair had gone stark white. A strange steam clung to his mouth and nose, curling up in sickly strands. His eyes rolled back and forth in terror. He tried to give a scream but, though his chest heaved with all its might, the sound that echoed forth was weak and distant—hardly even a whisper.

  “There,” said Holmes. “Now you have met your ‘friends’. You have beheld a thing that has been seen by probably no more than five or six living men. Perhaps only by you and me. Do you love them still? Shall I let them come? Only ask and I will do it.”

  “You wish to see another world?”

  Alec Cunningham answered, but his voice made no sense to me. At first, I supposed it to be only random noise: cheeps and chitters. Yet soon, by the careful diction of these sounds and by the repeated pattern of certain syllables, I recognized it as a language. What language it might be, I could not say; it was as foreign to my understanding as English had suddenly become to Alec Cunningham.

  “I’m going to suppose that to mean ‘please don’t’,” said Holmes. “Come along, Watson. We’re safe now. Tomorrow we’ll send men with sledges to break that stone to powder. We’ll see that Alec here is the last fellow it ruins.”

  But had it ruined him? Certainly not without a little help from Holmes. And yes, Alec Cunningham was a killer. Yes, he’d been armed. Yes, engaged in an attempt to doom our world. But to see him… to behold the look of horror in his eyes… had there been no gentler path to victory?

  “Er… can we help him?” I asked.

  Holmes harrumphed. “No man can, I should think.”

  He meant it to sound disdainful—and it did—but I knew him well enough to hear the ring of terrible guilt beneath his words. Why did he act so rashly, if he knew he’d regret it? I could not fathom why Holmes—who drew all his powers from demonic sources—should be so angered to see the same act perpetrated by another. Why did he hold himself harmless, yet lash out so violently against his lesser peers? Then suddenly, I realized:

  He didn’t.

  True hate can be focused outwards, but that is not its natural direction. It is an inward-facing malady. True, young Cunningham had nearly caused a catastrophe, yet his was a single act. How much more damage had Holmes himself done over his many years of magical practice? How much more intimately had he woven the brimstone thread into our world through trivial but oft-repeated acts of magic? I knew Holmes was not ignorant of that balance. And yes, some superficial elements of his anger might be directed at Cunningham and the other dabblers he met, but the love he bore for the world of man must perforce demand that Holmes reserve the core of his hatred for the man he knew to be the worst of all their ilk:

  Warlock Holmes.

  Wretch.

  Betrayer.

  Holmes turned and stalked back towards the Cunninghams’ house, eyes downcast.

  * * *

  That is about all there is of the matter, except to relate a few closing points.

  The second half of the murder note was found in Alec Cunningham’s jacket pocket. When joined with the scrap Holmes and I had recovered, it read:

  IF YOU WILL ONLY COME ROUND AT QUARTER TO TWELVE

  WE WILL TEAR THE HEART FROM YOUR CHEST, WHICH SHOULD

  KILL YOU FAIRLY QUICKLY. BETTER STILL, WE SHALL

  USE IT TO OPEN A DEMON GATE. THUS, YOU ARE RID

  OF THE TERRIBLE BOREDOM WE ARE HEIRS TO AND

  THROUGH YOUR DEATH, THE MOST INTERESTING EVENT

  EVER TO GRACE REIGATE SHALL OCCUR. CONSIDER IT.

  In light of this evidence, the local magistrate had difficulty classifying Kirwan’s death as murder. He was quite stymied by the case. As a compromise, Cunningham Senior agreed to remain under house arrest and be warden to Alec (which indeed, was exactly the state in which he had spent his life up to that point).

  The events caused quite a stir and all Reigate residents went, with frequency, to visit the old man and behold his ruined son. Rare was the day when Cunningham had no gawkers to keep him company. Colonel Hayter was bitterly jealous.

  Alec Cunningham never again reclaimed his tongue or his senses. Though his father had a devil of a time getting him to take food, Alec would feverishly devour any hair he could lay his hands on. He plucked himself bald in the matter of a few days, much to the delight of the crowds who came to view him.

  Holmes and I fled. No town so small can contain a secret so large and Reigate, I knew, would soon become a bit hot for us. I hired another carriage to secrete us back to London that very day. Warlock’s mood was black and distant as the journey commenced but eventually he mumbled, “I didn’t mean to slight you, Watson.”

  “Eh? Slight me? How?”

  “When I said that only Cunningham and myself had seen such horrors—in the heat of the moment, I forgot your own ordeals. I did not mean to make light of the things you’ve suffered.”

  “Bah. I’ve had nothing that terrible ever happen to me. Worst I’ve ever been is shot.”

  “No, I seem to remember that you once had the entirety of time and space thrust through your chest.”

  “By Jove! I had forgotten!” I laughed.

  Holmes shuddered. “Can’t have been pleasant…”

  “Oh, no. No. I certainly don’t care to repeat the procedure.”

  He smiled. I smiled back. Still, I could not help but wonder aloud, “Are you sorry for what happened? To Cunningham, I mean?”

  “Not really, Watson. He got what was coming to him and the next fellow to endanger our world so callously deserves the same.”

  He sighed, peeped absentmindedly through the crack in the window curtains and added, “Even if it’s me.”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY TRICYCLIST

  AS RECUPERATIVE TRIPS TO THE COUNTRY GO, I CANNOT say that Holmes’s and my visit to Surrey was an unqualified success. Trouble, it seemed, would find Holmes wherever he chanced to go, so I saw no benefit to denying him the pleasures of his own hearth. The main bar to domestic peace was no supernatural assailant, but—just as always—Mrs. Hudson. I could conceive of no realistic plan to prevent her from discovering Holmes’s ghastly condition. My best option, I concluded, was to take the fight to the enemy. In other words: to force the revelation upon her, but on my own terms.

  I prepared a deception.

  The day of our return, I intercepted her in the hall and said, “Holmes is back.”

  “So?”

  “I have prescribed a course of recuperation for him, following his excursion to the south of France.”

  “No care of mine, so long as the rent is reg’lar.”

  “Yes. Yes quite. But you know, Mrs. Hudson, I wished to speak with you and ask you not to stare…”

  “Stare? At what?”

  “I fear Holmes’s vacation included a dalliance with a chorus girl…”

  “No!”

  “And that he has contracted—in my medical opinion—a case of Indo-Brazilian super-gonorrhea. So please, if you could refrain from gawking—”

  This request was instantly disregarded. Mrs. Hudson bludgeoned me aside with her wrinkled forearm
and charged into our rooms to see if Holmes’s affliction was an equal for the horrific exaggerations of carnal illness she’d read of in her collection of illegal novels.

  I think she was not disappointed.

  In fact, Holmes was a bit of a hero to her for a time. 221B Baker Street became a healing haven and we passed our days in comfortable torpor. I deflected every client I could, trusting much to Grogsson and Lestrade. Day by day, Holmes mended, the skin over his scorched cheekbone slowly closing as his withered eyeballs re-inflated. After a time, he could wander down Baker Street, knowing he would draw only surreptitious glances of pity, rather than the outright screams of horror he’d first engendered. He was rather proud of himself on that score and took frequent strolls in Regent’s Park. The spring and summer passed easily until, just as August waned, adventure found us once more.

  One day our door swung open to reveal Lestrade, looking sullen. By his side stood a young lady, and by her side stood Mrs. Hudson, examining her with some vigor. She pulled at the woman’s sleeve and poked her in the hip appraisingly, eyeing her up and down like a racing fan scrutinizing a thoroughbred. I think Mrs. Hudson was at once repelled by the strangeness of our guest and enraptured by the beauty that strangeness failed to mask. I’ll confess, I felt the same. Though, in my defense, I wasn’t agonizing over whether our visitor was fit to be the heroine of an illicit novella, which—I suspect—was the trap that had caught my landlady.

  The woman was tall—taller than me and nearly the equal of Holmes. Her eyes were steady and betrayed no hint of fear, yet they did demonstrate a certain social ignorance as they peered at us from behind brass-and-leather cycling goggles, which she had failed to remove despite being indoors. Her limbs were long, and she held herself with a strange, athletic stiffness. She wore trousers and seemed to show no awareness that this was shocking, perhaps even more so than her goggles. Strangest of all was her hair. Neither styled like a gentlewoman’s nor drawn into a working woman’s bun, it hung straight and loose, down her back in the fashion of… well, of an eight-year-old, I suppose. It bespoke utter social ignorance, yet it was also rather—I don’t know—long and silky and strangely fascinating to gaze at. My low estimation of her social aptitude was vindicated the moment she opened her mouth. She gazed at Holmes, pointed a finger at his chest and said, “You look scary.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Holmes, “but I’m really quite nice.”

  “There’s something wrong with that one, too,” said our guest, swinging her finger over at Lestrade.

  “Absolutely,” Holmes agreed. “Hideously wrong. Well spotted.”

  Finally, the finger came my way and its owner muttered, “That one looks normal though.”

  “Vexingly normal, most days,” said Holmes.

  “Except that moustache,” she added.

  “Wait! My what?”

  Lestrade cleared his throat pointedly and announced, “Gentlemen, I have a case I think may interest you. This is Miss Violet Smith. She gained some notoriety last year, when she won a newspaper contest for a Starley’s Ariel bicycle.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “I think I recall it.” She’d been London’s darling, for a while. The Daily Telegraph had not thought to post “men only” in the contest rules, for it simply hadn’t occurred to them that any lady might enter. Not only had Miss Smith entered, she had dominated. Every day, the contestants gathered to ride the cycle they hoped to win through another ridiculous challenge course. Every day, Violet swept the field. Her victory was made all the more popular by her extreme poverty—the recent, untimely death of her father had left her and her mother in such dire straits that it would be hard to construct a more perfect underdog.

  “Lestrade, Miss Smith, won’t you step inside?” said Holmes. “Mrs. Hudson, won’t you bugger off?”

  “Holmes!”

  “What? We all want her to.”

  “Immaterial!”

  Nevertheless, I was rather pleased to see Mrs. Hudson do as Holmes suggested. As I settled Lestrade and Miss Smith into their seats and set the kettle on to boil, I said, “I have heard nothing of you, since the contest. I hope the victory improved your fortunes?”

  In a monotone staccato that a Gatling gun might envy, Miss Smith replied, “No. It was only a bicycle, not a lot of money. And we were still poor. And then a letter came from South Africa. And we thought it might be from Uncle Ralph. And perhaps he got rich in the diamond mines, like he promised. But it wasn’t him. Just his friend, Robert Carruthers. And when he got here, he told us Uncle Ralph had died. So that’s no good. And we still didn’t have any money. So that’s no good. But Mr. Carruthers is really nice. And he gave me a job. So that’s good. And he said I should come live in his house and teach his daughter Sylvia to play music. And she’s ten. And she’s nice. And he said he’d give me a hundred pounds a year. And I said, ‘Wowie! A hundred!’ And he said I could ride my bike down to the train on Saturdays and go see Mother until Mondays. And it’s six miles to the station. And it’s a good ride. So that’s good. And I live at his house now.”

  “Where you teach his daughter music?” I asked.

  “I can play all the notes, really fast.”

  “Do you know, I believe you can,” I reflected. “So, you live with Mr. Carruthers, in his house in…?”

  “He has rented Chiltern Grange, near Farnham,” Lestrade interjected. “Indeed, that six-mile ride to Farnham station shall prove to be of importance. Miss Smith, why don’t you tell Holmes about Mr. Jack Woodley.”

  “Oh? Who is that?” asked Holmes.

  “I don’t like him,” said Violet, with a distasteful grimace. “He’s big. And he’s mean. And he has a huge red moustache. And he says he came back from South Africa, too. And he’s a friend of Mr. Carruthers. And Mr. Carruthers says so, too. But they don’t look like friends. They look like they always want to fight. And once they did—over me! Mr. Woodley came over to visit, all silly like he’d been drinking. But he didn’t smell like drink. And he said he was almost ready to claim me for himself. But Mr. Carruthers said I was a person, not a parakeet, and I didn’t belong to anybody, except myself. And maybe Cyril. And Mr. Woodley said he didn’t care. And he grabbed my wrist. And Mr. Carruthers hit him. And Woodley didn’t mind, because he’s so strong. And then he hit Mr. Carruthers back. And we thought he’d killed him for a minute. Because part of the top of his head came off. But they sewed it back on. So that’s good.”

  My mind reeled beneath Violet Smith’s barrage of facts. Which were important? What had caused her to seek police aid? For that matter, what had caused the police to seek our aid? Thus Holmes—who cared for people, not for details—bested me.

  “Who,” he asked, “is Cyril?”

  “Um…”

  For the first time since being invited to speak, Violet Smith seemed to have no words. She colored from the tips of her fingers to the roots of her hair.

  “His last name’s Morton but I just call him Cyril. And I’ve known him since we were little. And now he’s a mechanical engineer, almost! And he doesn’t mind if I’m big. Or if I say what I’m thinking. And when I won a bicycle he bought a bicycle. And he’s not a very good rider. But I like to ride with him, anyway. And he falls down, sometimes. But I pick him up. And he said he wants to marry me. And I said I really, really want him to. And Mother said she always thought as much. So that’s good. That’s… really good.”

  Holmes turned to me and fixed me with a knowing grin. “Do you see?” his smile said. “She’s wonderful.”

  It was the very best quality of my friend, Warlock Holmes. Yes, I was always one to be burdened by the particulars of a case—swamped in the minutiae, looking for that one, elusive clue that would turn the whole tale. Holmes never cared for such things. He’d simply find the person he liked best—then he’d do anything for them.

  I nodded. Yes. Here was our client. We would not fail her. I mean… once we found out what her problem was.

  “And so… what brought you to the police,
Miss Smith?” I asked.

  “Well after the hitting and the other hitting, Mr. Woodley had to go away. So that’s good. But then, I was riding to the station to go see Mother. And I saw this man with a big black beard. And he follows me. Every Saturday and Monday, he’s there. And he speeds up when I speed up. And he slows down when I slow down. And last week I tried to trick him. I went around the corner, past Charlington Hall, and I stopped. And I hid. And I waited for him to come around the corner. So I could ask who he was.”

  I might have boggled at the bravery of it, if it had been anybody else. But no, five minutes in the company of Violet Smith had taught me this was exactly the sort of behavior that might be expected of her.

  “But he never came around the corner. I looked for him. But the lane was empty.”

  “Was this strange pursuer on a bicycle, too?” I asked. “Or on foot?”

  “No. He’s got a tricycle.”

  Lestrade gave a pained smile and said, “It seems Farnham is currently experiencing a sort of mania for them.”

  Violet nodded vigorously and agreed, “Lord Charlington lives at Charlington Hall. And he says bicycles are old-fashioned. He says tricycles are the new thing. And the better thing. And he’s got about forty of them. And the second day I was at Chiltern Grange, he said he’d show me the wave of the future. And he made me get my bike. And he got his tricycle. And he made me race him. And it wasn’t very good for his heart. Because he couldn’t keep up. But he also wouldn’t give up. So we went round and round for hours. And he fell over. And we thought he was going to die. But the doctor said he’d be all right. But he had to go recuperate in the country. And I said we were already in the country. And they said he had to go to a different part of the country, far away from me. So he’s been gone ever since. And now someone’s got his house and all his tricycles. And someone was following me on one of them. So, the next time I was in town, I went and told the police.”