Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares (6 page)

“I don’t like Peeping Toms,” Torrance said. “I don’t like anyone sneaking around and trying to learn my business. I tend to put a stop to people who do that.”

I gasped for air, but none entered my lungs. My neck was in great pain, but greater still was the dread, the panic engendered by being unable to inhale. That which I had hitherto taken for granted – simple respiration – was now denied me, and my entire body convulsed in desperate horror at its absence. All I could see was Torrance’s ugly, leering face, his alcohol-pinkened eyes, his rough, ruddy cheeks. This lumpen, hirsute Neanderthal was murdering me, and I was powerless to prevent him.

In those moments, which I believed to be my final ones on this earth, my thoughts turned to Mary, as they should. I regretted that I would never again see my wife’s dear face or tell her how much I loved her. I have to admit that Sherlock Holmes crossed my mind as well. I had let him down. I had failed in the task he had charged me with. I hoped my friend would understand that I had done my utmost, and that he would, at the very least, avenge my death.

Dimly I heard a hissing, wheezing noise. I assumed it must be emanating from my own constricted windpipe, the sound of a man frantically trying to gulp in a few molecules of air in order to prolong his life that tiny bit further. It was either that or the blood rushing in my ears as my heart attempted to feed my oxygen-deprived brain.

Psssh-pah, psssh-pah.

I then divined that the sound originated outside me. Torrance could hear it too, and his face registered perplexity and not a little alarm.

His hold on my throat loosened ever so slightly, enough to allow me to draw the smallest sip of breath.

“Sinnott? Creevy? What the hell’s that?”

“Don’t know,” said his bald accomplice. “Sounds a bit like a steam locomotive.”

“Only there’s no railway round here,” averred the weaselly one. “Nor any underground track.”

“You don’t think...” Torrance began, and then his face fell as a terrible realisation dawned. He let go of me entirely and spun round, peering into the fog.

The
psssh-pah, psssh-pah
grew louder, accompanied by a matching beat of resounding thuds, something weighty and metallic striking the ground repeatedly.

“Oh crikey, lads,” Torrance said. “Look lively. It’s him. It’s blooming well
him.
The Bloody Black Baron himself!”

He drew a pistol, and Sinnott and Creevy levelled theirs. The Chinese women cowered together in a huddle, staring about them in dull, uncomprehending fright. I, for my part, sat in a crumpled heap on the wharf, heaving fog into my lungs and blinking dazedly. At the most basic level of consciousness I was aware of what was happening. I was, however, powerless to act, still recovering from my near-asphyxiation.

Psssh-pah! Psssh-pah!

Lights glowed in the fog, two searching eye-like orbs of brilliance.

A glimmering outline resolved into a tall, roughly man-shaped form.

A creature out of a nightmare had lumbered into view. It glared down at us with a face the likes of which would not have been out of place in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Its body was both humanoid and insectile, consisting of long segmented limbs and a jointed torso.

Even in my befuddled, half-witted state, I knew that I was looking at none other than Baron Cauchemar.

Coming to a standstill, Baron Cauchemar surveyed us from a height of at least eight feet. Grout’s uncle had not exaggerated his size at all. His great shining head swivelled, his lambent gaze taking in Torrance and cronies, the Chinese women, and me. He seemed to be assessing the assembled company, sorting friend from foe. The glide of his head from side to side was unnaturally smooth, and I discerned a faint whine that went with it, as of oiled machine parts in action.

For a time none of the humans on the quayside moved, too awed and intimidated to do anything but gape at the abomination before us. Then one of the women let out an involuntary gasp of fright, which seemed to break the spell.

Torrance cried, “We’ve all got barkers, lads. Let him have it!” and he began loosing off shots from his pistol. “This is for all the mates of mine you’ve nobbled, you miserable, misbegotten bludger!” he roared. “You won’t get me like you got them!”

Sinnott and Creevy added their gunfire to his, creating a veritable blizzard of bullets, all of them aimed point-blank at the great shadowy bulk before us.

The impact of the shots staggered Baron Cauchemar. Each struck with sufficient force to make him recoil somewhat. For all that, the bullets rebounded off him without causing any apparent harm. I heard the ricochets whizzing off in all directions. One even smacked into the barrels behind which I had not so long ago been sheltered.

Quickly the guns’ cylinders were spent. The air reeked of cordite.

Baron Cauchemar remained standing.

With an oath, Torrance ordered his cronies to attack in person. Both men hesitated.

“Do as I say, damn you,” Torrance bellowed, “or so help me I’ll stove your brains in myself!”

Thus spurred, the larger of the two thugs, whom I took to be Sinnott, launched himself forwards with a howling war cry. He drove into the baron headlong, grappling with him like a wrestler. To judge by Sinnott’s physique he most likely
was
a wrestler.

He caught Bloody Black Baron off-guard and managed to push him back a couple of paces, but then Cauchemar regained his footing and retaliated. The lower portions of his legs telescoped like pistons and extended to their full length again, and, with a loud
psssh-pah, psssh-pah,
he thrust Sinnott backwards. The bald brute could not resist or counteract in any way. He was driven wholesale across the wharf until he collided with the wheel of a dray. Wooden wheel spokes shattered with a dreadful splintering
crack
, as did Sinnott’s ribcage. With a groan, the thug slumped to the ground.

Creevy leapt on Baron Cauchemar from behind, brandishing a leather blackjack. He coshed the giant creature repeatedly on the head, which served only to annoy him. Cauchemar reached round and hauled Creevy off his back. He suspended him in the air, seemingly with no effort at all, one hand gripping his shirtfront, and I heard a sharp crackle and saw tendrils of bright blue brilliance pass between his palm and the thug’s chest, flickering like lightning.

For a moment Creevy writhed, his entire body jerking with helpless spasms. His mouth worked but no sound came out.

Then his head sagged and Cauchemar tossed him to the cobbles, where he lay as insensible as his colleague Sinnott. A wisp of smoke rose from his chest.

The Bloody Black Baron pivoted on the spot, evidently looking for the third crook, the ringleader, Torrance. He, crafty devil, was nowhere to be seen. He must have sought refuge somewhere out of sight while his two cronies were taking a licking.

So Cauchemar then turned his attention on me.

Those glowing eyes of his fixed on me, and I was, as they say, rooted to the spot. The creature had no reason to differentiate me from Torrance and his accomplices. To all intents and purposes I looked like just another people trafficker and, to him, merited the same harsh handling. I braced myself in anticipation of the attack that was sure to come.

“For goodness sake, Watson! Don’t just lie there, man. On your feet!”

The oh-so-familiar voice of Sherlock Holmes, coming to me through the mist, had a galvanising effect. I rose, just in time to see a Chinese coolie sprint in out of nowhere – the selfsame coolie who had bumped into me at the pub. He was not stooped any more. He stood straight and tall and ran with a sinewy grace. Now that he was not acting a role, I would have recognised the posture and deportment of my friend anywhere.

“Are you all right?” Holmes said, helping me up.

“Alive,” I croaked. My voice had been left reedy and hoarse thanks to Torrance’s strangling fist.

“I am more than glad to hear it. Curse me for not getting here sooner. I arrived in time to see Torrance manhandling you, but before I could leap into the fray, another appeared on the scene and saved me the trouble.”

He spun to face Cauchemar, who still loomed over us.

“You,” he said, addressing the giant in a loud, clear voice, with greater nerve than I ever could have mustered. “Baron Cauchemar I presume. This man is not your enemy. He is no associate of Abednego Torrance. Neither am I. You must know that. We two are on the side of the forces of law and order, and so are you, if your actions here tonight and elsewhere are any indication.”

Cauchemar was momentarily still, like some piece of hideous monumental statuary that had been fashioned with the sole aim of deterring and intimidating. I feared he might yet make a move against us, not crediting Holmes’s claim that he and I were unconnected with Torrance or his ugly commerce in any way.

Then, from across the wharf, came gunshots. I glimpsed Torrance, some dozens of yards away, leaning out from behind a handcart. He had reloaded and was shooting indiscriminately, caring not whether he hit Cauchemar or us, so long as he hit someone.

One round came perilously close to embedding itself in Holmes. It tore through the wide loose sleeve of his tunic, missing his forearm by a fraction of an inch.

“Quick!” my friend cried to me. “Your gun! Give it to me!”

I fumbled out my revolver. Holmes was certainly right to ask me for it, for I was still too dazed and disorientated even to think about using it myself, let alone shoot straight.

Holmes snatched the gun from me and returned Torrance’s fire. None of his shots found their mark, but they did at least force Torrance to take shelter momentarily. When the hammer clicked empty, I snatched a handful of extra bullets from my pocket and Holmes began feeding them into the cylinder.

Baron Cauchemar turned and lumbered towards where Torrance lay. Holmes’s gunfire seemed to have finally convinced the creature that we were not his enemies.

Torrance, having also taken the opportunity to reload, resumed firing. I did not see how he expected to penetrate Cauchemar’s hide when he had so signally failed to do so before. A couple of rounds pinged and whined off the baron’s seemingly impenetrable shell.

But then, with Cauchemar less than spitting distance away, one of Torrance’s bullets struck home, virtually at point-blank range, and there was a sharp grating noise and a spurt of liquid. The baron tottered, one leg crumpling under him. For an instant I thought he might fall.

“Ha!” cried Torrance. “Not so invulnerable after all.”

Cauchemar recovered his balance and reached for the handcart. He picked it up and tossed it aside as though it weighed nothing.

Torrance, now exposed, took to his heels, fleeing into the fog.

Cauchemar loped after him. It seemed he could not move as fast as he had before. Torrance’s shot had done serious damage. The drumbeat of his footfalls, not so rhythmic any more, faded.

The pace of my fear-quickened heartbeat likewise began to subside.

“Holmes,” I said, suffused with relief. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Even in that garish rigmarole.”

“This disguise, you mean? Garish it may be, old chap, but it fooled you, as my masquerades invariably do.”

“That is true,” I allowed. “So you were following me, even as I followed Torrance?”

“Merely making doubly sure that our prey did not elude us. The proverbial ‘belt and braces’ approach.”

Holmes doffed his conical straw hat and approached the group of frightened women. He bowed and addressed a few words to them in their own tongue, haltingly. It sounded to me as though he was offering them reassurance, a promise of help.

Then he returned to my side, peeling off his drooping grey moustache and the slivers of foam rubber which he had attached to his eyelids to mimic epicanthic folds.

“Are you recovered?” he enquired. “Up to a chase?”

I nodded.

“Then we must hurry. Torrance and Baron Cauchemar are both getting away. Although, with his leg lamed, I doubt the latter will move fast or get far.”

“How on earth do you propose to track them?” I asked. “Especially in this wretched fog.”

“Ah, but even if Torrance has left no obvious trail, Cauchemar has.”

Holmes went over and knelt by a dark, glistening puddle of liquid.

“Is that blood?” I said.

He drew a finger through it and held a sample up to his nose to sniff.

“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “The blood of a machine. Oil. If enough of it keeps spilling out, it should prove easy enough to follow.”

“And what of these women? We can’t just abandon them.”

Before he could answer, we heard running footsteps. Holmes swung round with the revolver, taking aim. He lowered the gun the instant he perceived that the new arrival was none other than a police constable, easily identified as such by the shape of the conical helmet perched atop his head.

“Quick, Watson,” he said. “We must abscond before he sees us.”

We darted into the fog, padding as softly as the cobbles would allow. The constable went by without spotting us. Discovering the huddle of Chinese women, he immediately began questioning them in his sternest official tones.

“What’s all this then? I heard gunshots. Who are you ladies? What are you doing here?”

Naturally his interrogation got no response – none that he could comprehend, at any rate.

Holmes and I hurried onward. Behind us, the constable started blowing his whistle to summon aid from any colleagues within earshot. Its shrill peeps were soon far behind us, getting fainter.

“A stroke of luck, him coming along,” Holmes said. “He and his fellow officers can attend to the women, and the presence of police should deter Torrance, if that villain doubles back to reclaim his ‘goods’, which I doubt.”

“Shouldn’t we at least have stopped and explained to the chap what was going on?”

“No time right now. Come on. We must keep on the trail while it is still fresh. Something yet can be salvaged from this night’s setbacks!”