The Sherlock Holmes Megapack: 25 Modern Tales by Masters: 25 Modern Tales by Masters (15 page)

“But what will become of Sarah?” asked Paxton.

“The monster will be turned over to the Regent Aquarium, no doubt,” said Lestrade.

“No, I cannot allow that!” Paxton roared. “That pack of imbeciles will not get my Sarah.” With that he took a step.

“Don’t move,” said Lestrade, brandishing his gun.

Paxton looked away, then abruptly ran past Lestrade. As he did, Lestrade discharged his revolver, hitting Paxton in the leg. Paxton stopped, clutched his wound, then reached out to the cave wall, on which were a series of levers. He pulled one down and we heard loud echoing noises throughout the cavern.

“He’s opened the door!” exclaimed Holmes.

“No one shall have my Sarah,” declared Paxton, looking as if he were in a trance.

“Come along now,” said Lestrade, “the hangman’s noose awaits you.”

“I shall not be punished for my genius,” said Paxton, who then ran to the precipice and leapt off it.

I watched in horror as he plunged into the water, then saw a gargantuan yellow eye—twice the size of an archer’s target—peer out from the muck. A mouth from a nightmare opened and issued a roar like thunder as a tentacle wrapped itself around Paxton, and dragged him under the churning depths. More tentacles appeared and flailed about, splashing and crashing, then slid under the water.

All was quiet. Holmes, Lestrade, Dunbar, and Paxton’s men stood silently transfixed. After a few moments, we turned, went into the tunnel, and quietly made our way through it. When we emerged in the forest, there was a police wagon waiting, accompanied by a few sturdy looking men.

“What will you tell the Yard, Lestrade?” asked Holmes.

“Oh,” said Lestrade, still apparently quite shaken, “I…I’ll tell them about the gang of cattle thieves, of course. But what I don’t understand, Holmes, is how you knew that Paxton—?”

“You supplied the photographs, Lestrade, of the tattooed arm. Between the dark circles, which I immediately surmised were the marks of the creature’s suction cups, and the odd angle of the cut…”

“The cut?”

“How the arm had been severed. There were no signs indicating that a saw or similar instrument had been used, nor were there any teeth marks that would suggest an animal, either a land or an aquatic one. That ruled out all the obvious possibilities, however, it occurred to me that the damage to the arm resembled nothing so much as the effect of the plates in a bird’s beak, its rhamphotheca.

“Birds tear or crush their food. Yet, of course, no bird of that size is known to exist. But a squid processes a beak, which has been duly compared to that of a bird. Then I thought of the find in New Zealand seven years ago. When Paxton looked at the photographs of the severed arm and denied any knowledge of it, I knew we had our man. The impressions of the creature’s suction cups alone should have elicited comment. The arm itself was released unknowingly through the grotto’s door, upon one of Paxton’s admitted daily cleansings.”

“Amazing,” said Lestrade.

Lestrade and Dunbar got into the wagon, as did Holmes and I, and we started off, back to the village.

* * * *

The next morning, we checked out of the inn, and were met at the train station by Katherine Collier. She thanked us profusely for clearing her father of the murder charges. Then Holmes and I climbed aboard the train, and it pulled out of the Harbourton station.

We were well on our way back to London, when I turned to Holmes and said, “So, Paxton’s men had been ordered to find cows to feed the creature?”

“Yes, and poor Mr Harris happened to stumble upon them one night as they were engaged in the act of stealing a couple of his Guernseys and paid the ultimate price. Since he had been their first human casualty, they weren’t sure what to do with him, and decided to bring him back to their master.

“Paxton then, it seems, had the idea that fat men might, shall we say, round out the creature’s diet. My examination of the suspect’s wagon wheels proved that his vehicle hadn’t been employed in the crime. The wheel tracks were not deep enough to account for the additional weight of Harris, Paxton’s men, and the cows.”

“The cows?”

“That’s correct. Paxton had his men inject them with a tranquilliser in order to take them clandestinely. That’s why none of the local farmers or anyone else ever saw or heard any of them being abducted. They were unconscious and lying flat in a wagon.

“For the same reasons, I knew that Edmund Collier couldn’t have done it either. His wagon was too small, and the ground showed no signs of being employed in such a venture. However, on the way to the siege tunnel, Watson, you lost your footing in the deep impressions of Paxton’s wagon tracks. And we’ve previously discussed the absurdity of Collier lifting Harris.”

“What a vile and horrible evil lived within Paxton,” I said.

“Odd how evil can sometimes cohabit very amiably with genius.”

“And Paxton’s house?” I asked, “You knew it as if you’d lived there.”

“You can thank my brother Mycroft for that. After I left you yesterday morning, I sent him a telegram with instructions to contact one of his highly placed Masonic associates. The house dates back five hundred years, and as a result, I suspected it would have a siege tunnel. Mycroft received the architectural plans immediately, then dispatched them by courier, whom I met at the train station.”

“This was quite a singular adventure, to say the least.”

“Perhaps, you’d do well not to relay this one to the public, Watson. I wouldn’t want your readers to think that you’d taken to flights of fancy like those of the French novelist, Jules Verne.”

“You have a good point,” I said as I watched Holmes light his pipe and stare out the window at the passing countryside.

I looked through the opposite window while I pondered the fate of Dr Paxton. With his death, what great discoveries would the world be deprived of? Then I thought of the creature and its return to the primordial waters from which it had come. Would humanity ever see its like again? Or was it destined to remain an elusive phantom for all eternity?

I was reminded of something that Sherlock Holmes had once said to me upon the completion of another case. “With even the most satisfying answers, there are always more questions.”

THE INCIDENT OF THE IMPECUNIOUS CHEVALIER, by Richard A. Lupoff

The Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin

“It is simple enough as you explain it,” I said, smiling. “You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.”

Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. “No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.”

—
A Study in Scarlet

It was not by choice but by necessity that I continued to read by oil lamp rather than arranging for the installation of the new gas lighting. In my wanderings throughout the metropolis, I had been present at demonstrations of M. Lebon’s wondrous invention and especially of the improved thorium and cerium mantle devised by Herr von Welsbach, and thought at length of the pleasure of this brilliant mode of illumination, but the undernourished condition of my purse forbad me to pursue such an alteration in the condition of my lodgings.

Even so, I took comfort of an evening in crouching beside the hearth in my lodgings, a small flame of dried driftwood flickering on the stones, a lamp at my elbow, and a volume in my lap. The pleasures of old age are few and small, nor did I anticipate to experience them for many more months before departing this planet and its life of travail.

What fate my Maker might plan for me, once my eyes should close for the last time, I could only wonder and await. The priests might assert that a Day of Judgment awaited. The Theosophists might maintain that the doctrine of Karma would apply to all beings. As for me, the Parisian metropolis and its varied denizens were world enough indeed.

My attention had drifted from the printed page before me and my mind had wandered in the byways of philosophical musings to such an extent that the loud rapping upon my door induced a violent start within my nervous system. My fingers relaxed their grasp upon the book which they held, my eyes opened widely and a loud moan escaped my lips.

With an effort I rose to my feet and made my way through my chill and darkened apartment to answer the summons at the door. I placed myself beside the portal, pulling at the draperies that I kept drawn by day against the inquiring gaze of strangers and by night against the moist chill of the Parisian winter. Outside my door I perceived an urchin, cap set at an uncouth angle upon his unshorn head, an object or scrap of material clutched in the hand which he was not using to set up his racket on my door.

Lifting an iron bar which I kept beside the door in case of need to defend myself from the invasion of ruffians and setting the latch chain to prevent the door from opening more than a hand’s width, I turned the latch and drew the door open far enough to peer out.

The boy who stood upon my stoop could not have been more than ten years of age, ragged of clothing and filthy of visage. The meager light of the passage outside my apartment reflected from his eye, giving an impression of wary suspicion.

We studied each other through the narrow opening for long seconds before either spoke. At length I demanded to know his reason for disturbing my musings. He ignored my question, responding to it by speaking my name.

“Yes,” I responded, “it is indeed I. Again, I require to know the purpose of your visit.”

“I’ve brought you a message, monsieur,” the urchin stated.

“From whom?”

“I don’t know the gentleman’s name,” he replied.

“Then what is the message?”

The boy held the object in his hand closer to the opening. I could see now that it was a letter, folded and sealed with wax, and crumpled and covered with grime. It struck me that the boy might have found the paper lying in a gutter and brought it to me as part of a devious scheme, but then I remembered that he had known my name, a feat not likely on the part of a wild street urchin.

“I can’t read, monsieur,” the child said. “The gentleman gave it me and directed me to your lodging. I know numbers, some, and was able to find your place, monsieur.”

“Very well,” I assented, “give me the paper.”

“I’ve got to be paid first, monsieur.”

The boy’s demand was annoying, and yet he had performed a service and was, I suppose, entitled to his pay. Perhaps the mysterious gentleman who had dispatched him had already furnished him with payment, but this was a contingency beyond my ability to influence. Telling the child to await my return I closed the door, made my way to the place where I keep my small treasury, and extracted from it a sou coin.

At the doorway once more I exchanged the coin for the paper and sent the child on his way. Returning to the dual illumination of hearth and oil lamp, I broke the seal that held the letter closed and unfolded the sheet of foolscap. The flickering firelight revealed to me the work of a familiar hand, albeit one I had not glimpsed for many years, and a message that was characteristically terse and demanding.

Come at once. A matter of urgency.

The message was signed with a single letter, the initial
D.

I rocked back upon my heels, sinking into the old chair which I had used as my comfort and my retreat from the world through the passing decades. I was clad in slippers and robe, nightcap perched upon my head. It has been my plan, following a small meal, to spend an hour reading, then retire to my narrow bed.

Instead, I now garbed myself for the chill of the out-of-doors. Again I raided my own poor treasury and furnished myself with a small reserve of coins. In a short time I had left my apartment and stood upon my stoop, drawing the door closed behind me and turning my key in the lock.

No address had been given in the demanding message, nor was the messenger anywhere to be seen. I could only infer from the lack of information to the contrary that my old friend was still to be located at the lodgings we once had shared, long ago.

It was too far to travel on foot, so I hailed a passing cab, not without difficulty, and instructed the driver as to my destination. He looked at me with suspicion until I repeated the address, 33 Rue Dunot in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He held out his hand and refused to whip up until I had delivered the fare into his possession.

The streets of the metropolis were deserted at this hour, and mostly silent save for an occasional shout of anger or moan of despair—the sounds of the night after even revellers have retired to their homes or elsewhere.

As the cab drew up I exited from it and stood gazing at the old stone structure where the two of us had shared quarters for so long. Behind me I heard the driver grumble, then whip up, then pull away from number 33 with the creak of the wooden axle and the clatter of horse’s hooves on cobblestones.

A light appeared in a window and I tried, without success, to espy the form of the person who held it. In a moment the light moved and I knew that my erstwhile friend was making his way to the door. I presented myself in time to hear the bar withdrawn and to see the door swing open.

Before me stood my old friend, the world’s first and greatest consulting detective, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. Yet though it was unquestionably he, I was shocked at the ravages that the years had worked upon his once sharp-featured visage and whip-thin frame. He had grown old. The flesh did not so much cover his bones as hang from them. I saw that he still wore the smoked-glass spectacles of an earlier age; when he raised them to peer at me his once ferret-like eyes were dim and his hands, once as hard and steady as iron rods, appeared fragile and tremulous.

“Do not stand there like a goose,” Dupin commanded, “surely by this time you know the way.”

He retreated a pace and I entered the apartment which had meant so much to me in those days of our companionship. Characteristically, Dupin uttered not another syllable, but instead led the way through my onetime home. I shut the door behind me, then threw the heavy iron bolt, mindful of the enemies known to seek Dupin’s destruction in a former epoch. That any of them still survived was doubtful, that they remained capable of working mischief upon the great mind was close to what Dupin would have deemed “a nil possibility,” but still I threw the bolt.

Dupin led the way to his book closet, and within moments it was almost as if the decades had slipped away. He seemed to regain his youthful vigour, and I my former enthusiasm. Not waiting for me to assume the sofa upon which I had so often reclined to peruse musty volumes in past decades, Dupin flung himself into his favourite seat. He seized a volume which he had laid face downward, its pages open, upon the arm of his chair.

“Have you seen this?” he demanded angrily, brandishing the volume.

I leaned forward, straining in the gloom to recognize the publication. “It bears no familiarity,” I confessed. “It looks but newly arrived, and my reading in recent years has been entirely of an antiquarian nature.”

“Of course, of course,” Dupin muttered. “I will tell you what it is. I have been reading a volume translated from the English. Its title in our own tongue is
Une Etude en Ecarlate.
The author has divided the work into chapters. I will read to you from a chapter which he entitles ingenuously
La Science de Deduction.

Knowing that there was no stopping Dupin once he was determined upon a course, I settled upon the sofa. The room was not uncomfortable, I was in the company of my ancient friend, I was content.

“I will omit the author’s interpolations,” Dupin prefaced his reading, “and present to you only the significant portions of his work. Very well, then!

Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.

With a furious gesture he flung the slim volume across the room against a shelf of volumes, where it struck, its pages fluttering, and fell to the carpet. I knew that the Poe to whom the writer averred was the American journalist who had visited Dupin and myself from time to time, authoring reports of the several mysteries which Dupin had unravelled—with, I took pride in recalling, my own modest, but not insubstantial assistance.

“What think you of that?” Dupin demanded.

“A cruel assessment,” I ventured, “and an inaccurate one. Why, on many occasions I can recall—”

“Indeed, my good friend, you can recall the occasions upon which I interrupted your words to tell you your very thoughts.”

“As you have just done,” I averred. I awaited further words from Dupin, but they were not at that moment forthcoming so I resumed my speech. “Who is the author of this scurrilous assessment?”

“The author’s name matters not. It is the villain whom he quotes, who is of significance.”

“And who, may I inquire, might that person be?”

Dupin raised his eyes to the ceiling where smoke from the fireplace, draughty as ever, swirled menacingly. “He is one whom I met some years ago, long after you had departed these quarters,
mon ami.
I had by then largely retired from my labours as a consulting detective, and of course my reputation had long since reached the islands of fools.”

By this time I could see that Dupin was off on a tale, and I settled myself more thoroughly than ever upon the sofa, prepared to listen to the end.

* * * *

Those were days of tumult in our nation (Dupin said) when danger lurked at every turning and the most ordinary of municipal services were not to be taken for granted. When I received a message from across the Channel, I was of course intrigued.

The writer was a young man who professed admiration for my exploits and a desire to learn my methods that he might emulate them in the building of a reputation and a career for himself in his own land. I received many such communications in those days, responding to them uniformly that the entire science of detection was but a matter of observation and deduction, and that any man or even woman of ordinary intelligence could match my feats did he or she but apply those faculties with which we are all equipped to their full capacity. But the person who had written to me mentioned a particular case which he had been employed to resolve, and when he described the case my curiosity was piqued.

Your expression tells me that you, too, are aroused by the prospect of this case, and I will tell you what it concerned.

The young man’s letter of application hinted only of a treasure of fabulous value, a cache of gold and gems lost some three centuries, that had become the subject of legend and of fanciful tales, but which he believed to exist in actuality and to be in France, nay, not merely in France but in the environs of Paris itself. Could he but find it he would be wealthy beyond the power of imagination, and if I would but assist him in his quest a portion of it would be mine.

As you know, while I am of good family, I have long been of reduced means, and the prospect of restoring the fortunes of my forebears was an attractive one. My correspondent was reticent as to details in his letters, for I wrote back to him seeking further information but was unable to elicit useful data.

At length I permitted him to visit me—yes, in this very apartment. From the first his eccentric nature was manifest. He arrived at a late hour, as late I daresay as you have yourself arrived this night. It was the night before that of the full moon. The air was clear and the sky filled with celestial objects whose illumination, added to that of the moon, approached that of the day.

He sat upon the very sofa where you recline at this moment. No, there is no need to rise and examine the furnishing. You do make me smile, old friend. There is nothing to be learned from that old sofa.

The young man, an Englishman, was of tall and muscular build with a hawklike visage, sharp features, and a sharp, observant mien. His clothing bore the strong odour of tobacco. His hollow eyes suggested his habituation to some stronger stimulant. His movements suggested one who has trained in the boxing ring; more, one who has at least familiarized himself with the Japanese art of
baritsu,
a subtle form of combat but recently introduced in a few secretive salons in Paris and Berlin, in London, and even in the city of Baltimore in Maryland.