Warlock Holmes--A Study in Brimstone (33 page)

Holmes blinked a few times and cocked his head to one side, searching for a retort. “Well, that’s… The thing is… Watson, can’t you see…” He fell silent for a few moments, then moaned, “Well, I can’t break it off now! What will become of poor Agatha?”

“Don’t feel bad, Holmes. Ten spouses are considered more than adequate. I am sure she will survive. Though, from what you tell me, I am sure she cannot survive
very much
longer.”

“Oh,” said Warlock, shaking his head to clear away the remaining confusion, “so then, actually my plan…”

“…did not go so very well,” I concluded. “Yet, do not despair. You have seen his house and have some idea of the lay of the land. I propose we seek a simpler expedient—let’s burgle him.”

“Watson! I’m surprised at you!”

“Well,” I said, “we are running out of time. Tomorrow night will be our last chance. As negotiation and covert operation have now failed, we must turn to less legal strategies. Besides, the man is a colossal ass; I really don’t mind burgling him.”

“Oh no, I quite agree,” said Holmes. “I didn’t mean to imply that I was
unpleasantly
surprised.”

“We are agreed, then,” I told him. “Oh, and, Holmes, don’t forget to put your teeth back in.”

“Hmm? Oh! Yes, I shall. Thank you, Watson.”

* * *

I spent the next day teaching myself the trade of burglary. The public is possessed of a morbid love of crime stories, so it was not hard to come across several ha’penny pamphlets that detailed the sort of cloak and dagger business I needed. Though it can be problematic to obtain the tools of such a trade, I was in the position to solve that difficulty with only twelve words: “Lestrade, please steal me the best thieves’ tools Scotland Yard has confiscated.” He didn’t appreciate being given errands to run in the light of day, but he did come through. Two hours later, I found myself the proud owner of a dark lantern, a diamond-tipped glasscutter, a nickel jemmy, and a set of skeleton keys.

I was also privileged with access to medical supplies. Thus, one cab ride later, I had an assortment of anesthetics—courtesy of Stamford—that would make fine knockout drops. On the way home I stopped by a butcher’s shop and gave him tuppence for a bag of gristly scraps. These I dosed with my homemade sleeping sauce, in case we ran into any dogs.

I packed my new tools and anti-canine meatballs into a dark leather satchel with my pistol. All that remained was to cut a few masks from black dressmaker’s felt and wait. An hour before nightfall, Holmes and I set out for Milverton’s house in Hampstead to begin our career of crime.

I was never much afraid of being burgled until I tried it myself and discovered how impossibly easy it is. I will confess I was afraid of guard dogs. I need not have been. All dogs love a good bite of fatty meat followed by a nap. I was happy to provide both. Milverton had only one dog and he was down and snoring happily in under a minute. The only response from his household to the dog’s warning barks was one groom who shouted at the mutt to stop his noise.

Holmes and I made a quick half-circuit of the house, planning our best point of ingress. As some of the windows did not have their curtains drawn completely, we had a good many chances to look in at our targets. Fortune was with us; we found Milverton’s ground-floor study unoccupied, unguarded and with the curtains open wide enough for us to view our goal.

“Look at that safe!” Warlock hissed. “It’s as big as a wardrobe. No man has that many papers to guard in a home study, eh? Oh no, Milverton, I think I know what you’ve got in there…”

“How are we to crack a safe like that, Holmes?”

“Well… I’ll have to take a look at it, I suppose. For now, let’s just worry about getting to it, eh?”

I didn’t even have to make a noise shattering the window. The back of my glasscutter had a sharp hook, whose use I soon guessed. It happened to be the perfect shape to work into the corner of a window and slice away the glazing that held the pane in the wood frame. I withdrew the entire sheet of glass intact. I then turned to the next window over—whose pane was the exact same size—and placed the pane I had removed up against its twin. I wedged its corners with sticks to keep it in place. Since glass is barely discernible from an empty pane, anybody who looked at the house would see no cut window, no broken glass and no pane leaning against the side of the house to hint that there were intruders about. Only the lack of glare upon the empty window frame could give us away. For my coup de grâce, I planned to simply replace the pane on the way out and let them puzzle over how we’d ever gotten in in the first place.

As we crept over the windowsill and across the study, I hissed, “I imagine you are planning on turning the door of that safe into a duck, or some such…”

“Oh! What marvelous fun! I hadn’t thought of that.”

“…but I really think we ought to try cracking it without resorting to magic.”

“Then by all means, Watson, you attempt it first. If you succeed, all the better. If not, I will make short work of it, I promise.”

“Fair sport,” I said.

“Quack,” said Holmes.

I stifled a laugh and said, “You watch the door.”

The room was not entirely dark; the remains of a fire slowly burned itself out in the grate. I could see the safe well enough. It was an older model with three parallel dials, which spun towards the operator, displaying only one number at a time. The dials went from one to thirty. Despite its age, the mechanism turned smoothly and I could discern no click or pause when one of the dials was turned to any number. I shifted my attention from the dials to the safe itself, searching for any way to force the door, the top, or the back. Soon, I had to admit that my only hope lay in guessing the combination.

I wracked my mind, but could think of no combination that might be meaningful to Milverton—I barely knew him, after all. Holmes was beginning to get impatient. At last I struck upon a realization: assuming Milverton did not bother to turn the dials away from their orientation while the safe was unlocked, only the proper numbers would be exposed. I could therefore guess the correct combination by carefully noting which numbers were the most faded by the sun. I was about to call Holmes over with the lantern, when he scuttled over of his own accord and whispered, “Someone’s coming!”

“Quick! Douse that lantern! Get behind the curtains,” I said. “Stand upon the windowsill or they’ll see your feet.”

Holmes and I had scarcely reached our perch before the door handle turned. The door opened, but no challenge was shouted, nor did any sound of a search come to my ears. Whoever had come in walked about with lazy strides. He threw a few fresh logs on the fire, paced over to the desk, lit a cigar and then—judging by the creaking of wooden chair legs—came to rest himself in the armchair by the hearth. As I knew the occupant’s back must be towards us, I ventured a peep around the curtain. With horror, I recognized Milverton himself. No other man would wear such a blatant comb-over lest he perish of shame.

My relief that he was not searching for us was tempered by despair that he seemed to have no intention of leaving soon. He sat in the fireside chair, enjoying the occasional puff of his cigar, perusing a long legal document. As the minutes slid agonizingly by, the awkward nature of my stance upon the windowsill began to work on my back. I began to cramp. I began to squirm. I feared I would slip off and be discovered.

I am sure I would have failed, if it were not for Holmes. I could see him by the moonlight that filtered through the window behind us. Though his features were concealed by darkness and the mask that covered him nose to chin, still his focus shocked me. He was not normally a patient man, nor a cautious one, yet he waited—still as a gargoyle and twice as stern. He made no sound and betrayed no fear, but stood with his face frozen in a purposeful resolve, staring hawk-like at Milverton’s safe through the crack in the curtain.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a sudden footstep on the gravel path behind our window. Whoever trod there must have been no more than seven feet from us and I could not imagine how they had failed to see Holmes and me framed in the window. Nevertheless, this unexpected interloper’s footfalls moved away and around the corner of the house. In a moment, I heard a knock upon the veranda door that led into the study.

“At last,” Milverton mumbled. He stood and, as he did, I recoiled in horror to see what he was wearing. He had a claret-colored silk smoking jacket with a broad black collar and military-style epaulets fixed upon the shoulders. It was open to the waist, revealing a proud expanse of graying chest hair. On his legs he wore only gray silk shorts of a disgustingly sheer cut. I nearly gasped out loud when I realized what kind of appointment he might have arranged at this hour. I heard him unfasten the door and grumble, “You are late. I’ve been waiting half an hour.”

A woman’s voice replied, “Begging your pardon, good sir, it was all I could do to get away.”

“Ha. Yes, I have heard the Countess d’Albert keeps a strict household. Lord knows she has reason to guard her secrets. Yet here you are, eh? Come inside.”

“But… but, sir… I am unescorted and the hour is late, I fear…”

“Come inside, I say! You would balk for the sake of petty propriety? Do you not realize the scope of this endeavor? What you proposed to me is criminal. If I wished, I could have met you here with a detective at my side; we’d have had your pretty little neck in a noose before the week was out. As it happens, I am intrigued by your offer. Come inside and let us be partners, eh? I am sure you will find it worth your while.”

I heard her hesitate upon the threshold, but at last, with the soft swish of cloth, she stepped inside. She wore a long traveling cloak of dark green wool, which failed to conceal the burst of red curls that must have been either her pride or her bane. Her hair and her accent were enough to suggest her entire person to me. She was a shy, freckled Irish girl, employed as a domestic. She must be a basically good person, but struggling in the face of some difficulty—probably poverty—if she was forced into an alliance with Milverton. This was easy to imagine, but I blush now as I realize how much of my assessment was just that—imagined.

Milverton announced, “Now, you have these letters of the countess’s. You wish to sell. If they are as good as you say, I wish to buy. All that is left is to discuss price and… terms.”

He reached out towards her shoulder to guide her to a seat, but she shied from his touch. I didn’t blame her. It could have been a friendly gesture, but from a man in shorts like those, how could anything but lechery lie beneath? She took a chair and huddled in it. Milverton launched into a clumsily prepared speech on the subject of morality and how they were now partners outside it. I was sure the evening’s rendezvous would end with the promise of a substantial sum of money and an indecent proposition of another sort, but there was one surprise left.

A laugh. A woman’s laugh. It was deep and rich and merry. It rang forth into the room as if its owner could no longer resist some perfect jest. It must have been half an octave deeper than the scared little Irish girl’s voice had been and possessed of a confidence the trembling domestic could never dream of. I feared a second, unexpected woman had sneaked past my notice into the room. Yet when I peeped out around the curtain, I could see the woman in the traveling cloak’s shoulders bobbing with rhythmic regularity. Indeed, it was from her that the laugh issued. She said, “Charles, do you
still
not know me? I am wounded, sir.”

Milverton, who had just been turning back with the brandy he no doubt meant to ply her with, froze in his tracks. The color drained from behind his orange face treatment. “You,” he said.

“Even I.”

“How did you—”

“Escape that noose you put my pretty little neck in? Hangmen are easily fooled, Charles. They’re nearly as gullible as you.”

“Well,” Milverton said, endeavoring to regain the friendly persona he used in all his dirty dealings, “so glad to see you came clear of it. I really am. Felt just terrible, you know. You know? What a bad business.”

“Bad business indeed, Charlie. I told you not to cross me. But you couldn’t resist, could you? The first chance you got, you sold me out for a shilling, just to prove you could.”

“I say, that’s not fair.”

“No,” the woman agreed. “It wasn’t. But this is…”

The room brightened with a sudden flash and my ears rang at the report from a gunshot. I had not seen her hand reach down within the folds of her cloak, nor did I spot the revolver, yet the tongue of flame that leapt from it was unmistakable. Milverton reeled, stricken. The lady’s cloak slipped back just enough for me to see the slope of her jaw—pale and delicate. I would have said beautiful except that—in that moment of murder—it was drawn up into a smile. To gain pleasure at such a time—that is a thing only a monster can do.

And yet…

A thing can be horrible and beautiful at the same time. I have often wondered what would cross my mind if I were slain by a tiger. Fear, of course. Pain. Despair. And yet, I think, there would be an element of worship, too. Have you ever seen one—seen how its muscles move beneath the striped magnificence of its hide? It is a miracle beyond account that nature has framed such a perfect predator; married a thing’s form so exactly with its wicked function. It would be a mark of pride, to be slain thus. I would want it remembered that it was no mere fever that had removed John Heimdal Watson from the earth, no cancer, nor the slow, rhythmic ticking of a clock. No. The agent of my dispatch had been a creature whose beauty was as irresistible as its force—the exquisite slayer. I think I saw the shadow of such thoughts play upon Milverton’s face, too.

She fired again. And again. Milverton staggered back, trying to arrest his fall by grasping first at his chair, then his desk. It could not avail him. He fell. The air filled with screams. It took me a moment to realize that these issued not from Milverton, but Holmes. He sprang forth from our hiding place, crying, “No! What have you done? You can’t kill him! Ye gods! Watson! Watson, save him!”