Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares (17 page)

“My vigour remains undimmed,” I protested. “If an element of caution has crept into my personality, that is only to be expected. I no longer live solely to please myself. I am a husband, and shall one day, God willing, be a father.” Alas, an expectation forever denied me. “There is more to think about now than just myself.”

“And that is a wholly commendable attitude. You seem to take what I am saying as a personal slight.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” Holmes grinned slyly. “But it has been a useful distraction. For, look. We have walked some distance, and have arrived where Cauchemar is taking us, and you were so busy bickering with me, you ceased to pay attention to the disagreeable nature of our surroundings.”

“Holmes. Why, you... you...”

“Scoundrel?”

“Yes!”

“All in a good cause. Now, what’s this?”

The beam of Cauchemar’s chest-mounted light fell on the outline of something cylindrical and metallic that filled almost the entirety of the sewer tunnel ahead. It was tapered at the front, similar in its streamlined shape to a rifle cartridge, and was constructed from solid plates held together by rivets. Rows of huge knurled wheels projected at intervals all round its circumference, and a series of viewing portals extended across its front, through which I glimpsed a set of controls and what can only be described as a driving seat.

“Some kind of vehicle,” I said.

“The selfsame vehicle which left those grooves we observed in the wall of the sewer at Shadwell,” said Holmes. “This is how the baron gets around London unseen and so swiftly. Am I correct, Baron?”

“You are, Mr Holmes.” Cauchemar unlatched a large hatch, opening up the nose of the vehicle. “I call it the
Subterrene
. A submarine that travels under the ground rather than under the sea, powered by steam.”

“It is like a thing from a Jules Verne novel,” I professed. “But then so, in your way, are you, Baron.”

“I’ll take both those remarks as a compliment. You go aboard first, gentlemen.”

We stepped inside the extraordinary machine, finding just enough space for ourselves between the driving seat and the bulkhead behind. Cauchemar joined us, closing the hatch after him. It was a snug fit, all three of us in the confines of that “wheelhouse”. The vehicle had apparently not been built with a view to transporting passengers in comfort. It was made for one.

Cauchemar lowered himself into the driving seat, which was sufficiently large and reinforced to accommodate his dimensions and weight. The controls, likewise, were proportionate to the size of his huge, gauntleted hands. He threw a couple of levers and a large knife-switch, and from behind Holmes and me came the hiss of gas burning, the rattle of pipes heating up and the rumble of steam coalescing. An instrument panel lit up. Needles on gauges started to creep round. Indicator bulbs brightened.

“You might want to hold on to something,” Cauchemar cautioned, and we did as he suggested. “The
Subterrene
doesn’t afford the smoothest of rides.”

The vehicle was vibrating all around us like a greyhound in the trap, shuddering with pent-up energy, which Cauchemar released by means of twisting a stopcock valve. All at once we were lurching forwards. Powerful headlamps lit up the curvature of the sewer. Brickwork shot by us at increasing velocity.

The acceleration was so tremendous, it pushed us back against the bulkhead. The
Subterrene
juddered and rocked as it rocketed along. Now and then came a grinding sound from outside as the vehicle wended its way bumpily around a bend, wheels digging into brick.

Whenever we approached a junction, Cauchemar deftly spun a set of calibrated brass knobs which applied a brake to certain of the wheels. The
Subterrene
slewed in the desired direction and entered a new tunnel.

“Remarkable,” said Holmes, voice raised above the vehicle’s clamour. “To have made such good use of a relative novelty such as the sewer system. And unlike the underground railway there are no tracks to follow. The
Subterrene
may go anywhere, shuttling back and forth, left and right, at liberty.”

“I spent six months familiarising myself with the tunnels,” said Cauchemar, “and establishing which ones were navigable and which not. They have proved highly convenient. At the same time I was testing the
Subterrene’s
‘sewer-worthiness’. It has more than passed muster.”

The vehicle’s speed I must say I found disconcerting. We were plunging headlong through those sewers at a rate of knots, faster than any train I had been on, and with seemingly less security and restraint. Baron Cauchemar handled the controls in a manner which ought to have inspired confidence, yet I couldn’t help thinking that if we crashed, it was all right for him inside his armoured shell. He was well protected. What about us frail humans sheathed in mere textiles? We would end up hideously broken and mangled. I had once tended to the victims of a ghastly railway accident on the Southampton to Dorchester line, while I was at the Army Medical School at Netley, us trainees being called in to assist doctors at the local hospital who were in danger of being overwhelmed by the numbers of casualties, so I know whereof I speak.

Finally the
Subterrene
began to decelerate, our ultimate destination near. Cauchemar brought the vehicle to a halt in a side-tunnel that branched off a larger one. We were beside a walkway raised above the flow of effluent. He deactivated the engine, quieting its din, then opened the hatch.

Out we all went, across the walkway and up to a vast, thick door of the kind one might normally see guarding the entrance to a bank vault. Where we were, how far below the surface, in what part of London, I had no idea. There was no way of telling, not one visual clue to help.

Cauchemar spun a locking wheel and the door swung inwards. Holmes and I gamely followed him through into a high-ceilinged, windowless chamber which was filled with equipment, machinery and engineering paraphernalia. There was a lathe, a metalworking forge, and a plan table on which lay several sets of blueprints. There was also a baffling array of gadgets and devices, placed on various workbenches.

Cauchemar bade us make ourselves at home while he removed his armour.

This he accomplished by installing himself within a convoluted cat’s cradle of steel joists and beams which neatly fitted around his armoured form, as though he were the final piece that completed a jigsaw. A huge clockwork mechanism groaned into life and began peeling off his black metal carapace bit by bit, using pincers mounted on pistons which operated in a complex sequence.

First the furnace-powered engine was lifted from his back. Then the sections of armour that covered his limbs were dismantled, each falling smartly apart into two pieces. Then off came the torso segment. Last to be removed was the helmet, and with it the rig which piped his voice to the armour’s exterior, somewhat in the manner of a gramophone speaker.

Watching this automated dissection was like watching a giant insect being broken down into its components by the hand of some dispassionate entomologist. One could only marvel at the rapidity and intricacy with which it was done. Whoever had designed the apparatus, and for that matter Cauchemar’s armour, was an engineer of singular skill and ingenuity, a genius to rival Telford or Brunel.

Had Holmes and I harboured the hope of seeing Cauchemar’s face, and thus establishing his true identity, it was to go unfulfilled. For beneath his helmet he wore a padded woollen “under-mask”, doubtless to cushion his head as the knights of yore did with their arming caps and helm bonnets. It covered his face entirely save for two holes for the eyes, which made it also reminiscent of the knitted balaclavas which British troops took to wearing in the Crimea to stave off the cold. The rest of him was encased in a similarly padded set of longjohns.

Without doffing this under-mask, Cauchemar spent some time damping down the armour’s portable furnace. Holmes availed himself of the opportunity to wander the chamber, inspecting the blueprints on the plan table and also the many barely explicable constructs around us. I accompanied him.

The devices turned out on closer examination to be items of weaponry, for the most part. Many were obviously still in the development phase, works in progress, incomplete. A stubby crossbow-like thing was primed with three brass balls connected to one another by thick wire – I took this to be a method of projecting, at speed, a bolas such as the ones used by South American gauchos to bring down errant cattle. Another similar weapon employed a spring-mounted torsion engine to launch a bundled-up steel-filament net, which presumably unfurled in midair to wrap itself around its target. A third weapon resembled nothing so much as a small multi-barrelled cannon, equipped with clamps that would permit it to be attached to Cauchemar’s forearm. In place of cannonballs, mortar shells or any similar kind of shot, there were hessian sacks filled with rock salt and sewn into a tight purse shape.

“The baron,” Holmes observed, “seeks to put his enemies out of commission but not to kill them. There is evidently a line he refuses to cross.”

“That is true,” said Cauchemar, having conducted his business with the furnace. “And Dr Watson, I would be wary of touching that, if I were you.”

I had been about to lay hands on an intriguing contraption. It consisted of an elaborate arrangement of vacuum pump and pneumatic tubes, all connected to a glass tank filled with a glutinous white substance.

“It has something of a hair trigger,” Cauchemar continued, “and would cause a frightful mess if you got the contents all over yourself.” His voice, though now not distorted by the sound-conduction system his armour used, remained muffled by the under-mask. Even if Cauchemar had been a close friend of mine, I might not have recognised him purely from hearing him speak.

“Antipersonnel glue?” said Holmes inquisitively.

“Just so. A fast-acting, quick-drying paste, a formula of my own devising, which if jetted out in sufficient quantities covers its subject from head to toe and sets in an instant, rendering him immobile. I’m still experiencing a few teething problems with it, mainly related to speeding up the system of delivery. As yet, the paste works so efficiently, it tends to gum up the tubes before it can emerge, and the spray from the nozzle is as a result inconsistent and intermittent. But I am convinced I can get the thing to function properly in due course. As with any problem, it’s merely a question of time and the application of brainpower.”

“A fine sentiment, well put,” said Holmes. “You are a man after my own heart.”

Cauchemar greeted the accolade with an appreciative nod.

“We are,” he said to Holmes, “not so dissimilar, you and I, sir. We both rely on the strength of our minds, above all else, to combat crime. I lack your capacity for logical analysis and deductive reasoning, but what I have in its place is a knack for building things, especially things powered by compact motors using ultra-condensed steam.”

“You are also,” Holmes said, “of the middle classes, a scion of a modestly well-off family. I would put your age as early thirties, and your accent bespeaks a Home Counties upbringing, Sussex if I don’t miss my guess. You have a faint South Coast burr, modulated by education at a public school, one of the minor ones, because a top-tier public school would have thrashed every last trace of regional diction out of you. You came into a healthy-sized legacy in the not-too-distant past, not from your parents, because they were not of means, but from a rich relative, someone who was close kin but not that close. A childless uncle. That is how you have sponsored all this research and manufacture. Yes?”

Cauchemar’s bright blue eyes betrayed a flicker of surprise, which confirmed Holmes’s deductions.

“It is one thing to read about your uncanny ability to divine a stranger’s history from just a handful of personal traits,” he said. “It is quite another to see it put into action at first hand.”

“The novelty never wears off,” I commented. “Although it is preferable when Holmes practises it upon somebody other than oneself.”

“Furthermore,” said Holmes, “you have travelled, and even resided for some time on the Continent. France, to be precise.”

“What gives you cause to say that?”

“Elementary. Your adopted surname. A French word. Granted, you could simply have learned ‘
cauchemar
’ at school or plucked it from a dictionary, but it seems to me a very specific choice, one that has significance for you. Ergo, you must have lived in France and absorbed some of that nation’s culture. The Francophone regions of Canada were a possibility, or one of the French- or Belgian-dominated African nations, but France itself seemed, on balance, likeliest. An English
nom de guerre
, perhaps even ‘Baron Nightmare’, would have made sense if your goal was purely to intimidate the thieves and murderers of the East End, but there is more to your activities than that. I’d add that bestowing a peerage upon your armoured alter ego is no arbitrary act either. Your claim to a ‘barony’ has a purpose and an ulterior –”

“Please, Mr Holmes. Enough.” Cauchemar made a chopping motion. “I do not wish to regret inviting you and Dr Watson into my lair. I would prefer it if, as a professional courtesy to me, you desisted from prying into my background or motives. That is why I am keeping this mask on. I need to remain anonymous if I am to succeed in my aims. My admiration for you is unbounded, but I have my secrets and I would like them to remain such.”

“Since Watson and I owe you our lives,” Holmes said, “I will respect your request.”

But I recognised on my friend’s face an expression I knew all too well. Holmes had a hawk-like tenacity when confronted with an enigma. He could not rest until he had plumbed its every depth; and the more someone tried to discourage him from doing so, the more relentless his determination grew.

“Might I at least enquire,” he said to Cauchemar, “why you accused Abednego Torrance of being a traitor to his country?”

“Is it not obvious? The man was retrieving a hidden stash of dynamite, clearly with a view to helping perpetrate another bombing atrocity, which, thank God, has at least been prevented.”