Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (29 page)

“You would deny the presence of God’s hand in creation?” Wilkins asked.

“In creation, probably not,” Challenger admitted, “but certainly not a creation a mere six thousand years ago, as Usher purported, nor would I think that God’s hand has remained fast and firm upon the engines of creation during all the hundreds of thousands of years that have elapsed since the Beginning. How else could the platypus or the emu come into being in just one region, or the thunder lizards of the Cretaceous have passed from the world?”

Inspector Wilkins frowned. He quaffed his brandy and considered another. He must have been daft, he now realized. No matter his unorthodox ideas, Professor Challenger was a first-class naturalist and expert apologist. He would have had better fortune debating theology with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was too late to extricate himself from the hole he had dug so well, so he tried to divert the discussion onto another track.

“It seems to me that the essence of the Darwinian argument depends upon setting man in a universe where there is neither good nor evil,” Wilkins said.

“Usually, good and evil are philosophical abstractions or social conventions rather than moral absolutes,” Challenger said. “Not only do social practices vary widely from culture to culture, but even within a society morality is as changeable as the wind, an aspect refreshingly absent from the natural world—animals are never hypocrites, as humans usually are.”

“Animals lack a soul, Professor.”

“Not to their detriment, Inspector.” Challenger replied. “I would suggest that even in the basest cur there exists a nobility unattainable by the best human, all without either an acquired or developed sense of good or evil.”

“There exists within the human heart a divine spark giving man the natural ability to discern good from evil, the ability to choose one path over another,” Wilkins said. “Though men often inflict great cruelty upon each other, they may also choose to inflict great kindness. Though men are often beastly, and I have seen more than my share of such men in my chosen occupation, they are nonetheless men, not beasts. Being elevated above the animal kingdom, knowing good from evil, they also know right from wrong. When a man chooses to walk the wrong path he comes into conflict with society’s laws and so comes under moral judgment, which is why we bring a man to trial for murder, but not a dog. The possession of a soul instills a natural conscience, which brings with it a moral responsibility that we do not imposed upon lesser subjects of the animal kingdom.”

Challenger uttered a burst of laughter that sounded either like a thunderstorm or an artillery barrage. “Bravo Inspector! Such eloquence of speech! When you joined Scotland Yard, it was a loss to the pulpit. However, it will take more than fine words to convince me of the existence of absolute good and evil.”

Inspector Wilkins settled back into his plush chair. It was late and he had had too much to drink, else he might not have risen to debate Challenger. He looked to the room’s third occupant. “What are your own views on the absolutism of good and evil?”

Sherlock Holmes regarded his late visitors over narrow fingers peaked before his lean nose, through a swirling blue cloud of pipe smoke that was only a little less thick than the foul mist that pushed against and smeared the window pane. When the conversation had drifted from the matter of Tarlington, the Oxford Street money-changer who murdered his spendthrift wife with molten gold, to more esoteric disciplines his attention had wavered, or seemed to. His gaze became diffused, his eyes half-lidded, and to an outsider the famed consulting detective might have seemed on the verge of slumber, but he still followed his visitors;’ words closely, mining them for any nugget of information as might have value in his own world of crime and criminals.

“I now nothing of the philosophical disciplines, for they have little or no effect upon my work,” Holmes replied, his eyes still half-lidded. “However, I have not encountered any fact or combination of facts that would lead me to deduce that goodness exists in any form except as an unattainable abstraction.”

“Ah-ha!” Challenger cried victoriously.

Wilkins frowned.

“As, however, to evil,” Holmes continued, “it not only exists, but there are people who have so given themselves over to the committance of villainy that they scarce deserve to be called human. Inspector Wilkins and I know of several such people and have at times been successful in introducing them to the hangman at Newgate Prison.”

“I must say I…” Challenger started.

Holmes suddenly drew his long legs beneath him and sat forward in his chair, his lean body tense as a jaguar’s prior to a spring. He leapt from his seat, making for the doorway with great strides.

Challenger and Wilkins looked at each other, dumbfounded by Holmes’ sudden and unaccountable change in demeanor. Then from the floor below came the sound of frantic pounding upon the door, followed by a woman’s scream. By the time they spilled onto the landing, Holmes was already in the entryway, kneeling beside a prone man in tattered and bloodied clothing. Nearby, supporting Mrs Hudson, stood a man wearing the shapeless, bundled-up livery of a cab driver.

The injured man’s body was wracked with spasms. His chest had been lashed open. He clutched tightly at a heavy paper-covered object, which they were able to pry from his clawed hands only with great difficulty. As they did, a curved dagger with an ornate handle fell from his grasp, clattering across the hardwood floor, splashing through his spreading life-blood.

“Shall I send for Dr. Watson?” Mrs Hudson asked, her voice soft but backed by inner strength.

“No need to draw Watson from his assignment,” Holmes said, shaking his head. “This fellow is dead.”

“Poor devil!” Wilkins said. “Those wounds!”

“What manner of weapon could have done that sort of damage to a strapping armed man?” Challenger demanded.

“Perhaps he was set upon by a gang of nobblers.” Wilkins suggested. “They could have been after his package.”

“Challenger, check the street,” Holmes instructed. “Even if you do not see anything, be very wary of danger. Inspector Wilkins, please contact the Marylebone Constabulary.” He looked to the cabby, Alfred Paisley, and said. “Help me carry the body into a storage room where it may be examined.”

The cab driver hastened to carry out Holmes’ instructions, and Wilkins went with Mrs Hudson to place a telephone call through the central exchange. Challenger stood in the doorway, his massive bulk blocking it as surely as the stoutest oak barrier. The hansom was tied at curbside, but so thick was the sooty fog that he more heard the nickerings of the horse than actually saw either the animal or the cab. The darkness enshrouding the street was almost absolute. A few of the houses had been fitted with the new electric, but most were still gaslit, as was the street itself, but these illuminations did little to reveal what might be prowling Baker Street. Except for the cab driver’s nervous animal, it seemed as if the whole of London was wrapped in a terrible silence. He could barely breathe in the closeness of the night.

London was at once the greatest city on the surface of the planet, a brilliant beacon in the world’s nighttime, and a place of darkness and pain. He had explored the farthest reaches of Africa and South America, propelled as much by his insatiable curiosity as by a periodic desire to escape London’s air and reeking humanity. Yet he always returned to the confines of man’s greatest metropolis. The irony was not lost on him.

Challenger’s brow furrowed and he slowly swept his gaze about, as if he could dispel the gloom by dint of will alone. He had lived through many London Particulars, as Dickens’ Mr Guppy would have characterized the fog, many worse than this early morning toxin, but none had ever seemed more ominous. It might be nothing more than a reaction to what the tide of night-fog had deposited on Holmes’ door-step, but, even so, it seemed the scent of evil hung heavy in the foetid air.

Finally deciding the night was not going to give up any of its secrets, he closed the door. He paused, then dogged the heavy bolt into place.

“Look at these tattoos,” Holmes said as Challenger entered the room and reported the street’s apparent emptiness.

Wilkins had drawn the cab driver away from the body and was questioning him softly. There was no sign of Mrs Hudson. Challenger neared the mutilated body. Holmes offered the naturalist the use of his glass.

Challenger shook his bearded head. “I can see quite well enough.” He carefully examined the designs upon the man’s body. He had seen death many times in the wild places of the world, but it was not an acquaintance to which he had ever become accustomed. “A sailor, obviously,” he said, “a well traveled one.”

“Very,” Holmes agreed. “India, Arabia, New Zealand, Siam…”

“Cochin, Tonga, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Ceylon—the poor devil’s skin is as much a tribute to Britain’s mercantile empire as it is to the needlist’s art,” the scientist observed.

“Ah, what do you make of this mark just beneath his left arm, partially obscured there?” Holmes asked.

“It’s been badly lacerated,” Challenger said. “Curious symbol. It looks to be some fabulous animal, some sort of sea monster, very crudely done. Good God!”

“Ah, you note its true nature,” Holmes said with satisfaction.

“Yes, it’s not a tattoo at all,” Challenger replied. “He was branded. What does it mean? Could it have anything to do with the reason he died.”

Holmes lowered his chin to his fist upon his chest and stared intently, silently at the body on the table.

After what seemed an eternity, Holmes said. “This man was not killed with a knife or any number of them, was he?”

Challenger shook his head. “I wondered about that the moment I saw him. Had I encountered him in the wild, I would have assumed him killed by some sort of animal, but the claw marks are definitely not those of a bear or one of the great cats. In that case I would expect to see parallel furrows, but here the tracks are all singular, even though there are a great many of them.”’

“But they are claw marks?” Holmes asked.

“No doubt about that,” Challenger replied. “There’s a raggedness and an inconsistency of depth that you do not get with knife or sword wounds. And they’re not bite marks either, for there would be patterns that are plainly absent from our victim.”

“You talk like a forensic surgeon,” Wilkins observed, turning away from Alfred Paisley.

“A naturalist must often be a doctor in the wilderness, at least enough to sew up wounds and cure illnesses to incur the gratitude of tribal chiefs,” Challenger explained. “As to the other, I know how animals kill.”

“And you contend our dead sailor was killed by an animal?” Wilkins asked.

“If it were not such an impossibility in the heart of London,” Challenger replied, “I would swear to it in open court. As it is, I will only swear that this man was not killed by any weapon with which I am familiar.”

Wilkins stoked his chin. “That seems to support what Mr Paisley told me about the fare he picked up at Whitechapel.”

“Whitechapel?” Challenger rumbled. “Baker Street would be a bit out of your district, wouldn’t it?”

“Gave me a crown, ‘e did,” Paisley explained.

“What did you see when you picked up this man?” Holmes asked. “Please be precise and complete.”

The cabby shuffled his feet and cleared his throat several times. He was nervous, confronting death and the law, all in one night.

“Mr Paisley believes he may have seen some sort of animal,” Wilkins finally supplied.

“Ah, well, maybe not an animal, truly like,” Paisley quickly interjected. “Least not so’s I could swear to. An impression more’n anything else, Mr ‘Olmes, of something huge and dark out in the fog, big as a steam-train, having eyes like swinging lanterns. Looking back now, it’s ‘ard to say for sure there was anything there at all, though I knowed then that if I tarried and didn’t give me ‘orse free rein I’d be brown bread, like that poor bloke.”

“You saw he was severely injured then?” Holmes demanded.

“I saw ‘e was dying, Mr ‘Olmes.”

“Perhaps you would have been better of taking him to a physician,” Wilkins suggested. “If not to a private doctor, then the hospital in Whitechapel.”

Paisley emphatically shook his head. “Wasn’t far from dead when ‘e climbed up, he wasn’t. No doctor for Lazarus, and no rising up either. ‘Sides, he gave Mr ‘Olmes address, and I knew there was no better man to ‘elp a bloke, even a dead one.”

Sherlock Holmes smiled thinly. “You’re related to Wilbur Paisley.”

“Aye, that I am, sir,” Paisley admitted. “Me little brother.”

“The cracksman?” Wilkins exclaimed. “He was nicked last year by Lestrade.”

“Mr ‘Olmes sent Wilbur up to Dartmoor for a long stretch,” Paisley said. “A nice piece of work, it was.”

Challenger stared at the man in frank disbelief. “You’re a bigger man than I am, sir. I would not think well of a man who had sent my brother to prison, no matter how much he may have deserved it.”

“I proved that Wilbur Paisley was breaking into the safe of one Nigel Larkins, Solicitor, and not on the other side of London, murdering Lord Kettering.” Holmes explained. “I believe Lestrade is still upset about the case, though I
did
give him the murderer in the end.”

“Better a stretch at Dartmoor than being stretched at the gallows,” Paisley quipped. “Me brother’s always been a bad one, ‘e has, but ‘e’s me baby brother and ‘is mum’s lad, so there you are.”