Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (12 page)

“Yes,” the voice uttered with finality.

The sphere darkened.

Holmes returned down the stairs and wearily made his way back to the Time Machine.  He reactivated the mechanism and once more stirred its engines to life.

Within the tholos, the sphere glimmered with final life, and a familiar voice whispered:  “I wish you well, Mr Holmes.”

The Time Machine shimmered and vanished from a future already in the unmaking.

Chapter XVII

The Journey to Now

In the early morning hours of Monday, March 26, 1894, residents of Limehouse heard a curious sound from the direction of the Thames.  Some of  more elderly Chinese living near the Causeway likened the sound to river-demons, recalling the rural tales of their far off youths and linking it to the other weird happenings lately afflicting the East End; others too sophisticated and westernised to believe in such things, those who took white wives and saw the herbalists of Pennyfields only on the sly, said it was nothing more than an animal, or maybe a freakish wind from up the estuary, certainly of this world and nothing of the realm of shadows.  Those lounging upon the waterfront, at least those not completely sotted by gin or befuddled by tarry opium, also heard a loud splash in the centre of the river when the odd howling or whirring noise ceased.

Olan Jefferson, a seaman standing watch upon the Canadian merchantman 
Halifax
, reported seeing a strange machine appear out of nowhere, hover a moment, then plummet into the river.  He was severely disciplined by his captain for drinking on duty, though no bottle was ever found and Olan had never been known to imbibe anything stronger than an occasional shandy.

A watchman near the Greenland Dock on the Surrey side saw a man come ashore dripping wet and entangled with weeds, but by the time he was able to get to the water’s edge the man (if living man it was, for the watchman believed in ghosts) had vanished into the darkness.  An enquiry made of ships at anchor revealed no sailor had deserted ship or fallen overboard.

Sherlock Holmes sat in the rooms he had engaged at the Bridge House Hotel on Borough High Street, not far from London Bridge Station, taken while disguised and under a name not his own.  While the Bridge House was not an establishment where questions were unduly asked, he still exercised extreme caution.  As far as London and the world was concerned, he was still three years dead, and would not return to the land of the living for another week yet. A slight slip, and the tapestry of time would begin to unravel once more.

He remembered the new1954 that had been revealed upon his return journey, a London of glass and steel, a vibrant civilisation as ignorant of Morlocks as it was of Time Machines.

The future was cast, and he dared not do anything that might again set humanity devolving toward the futility of the Morlock and Eloi schism, not even to the extent of saving a man.

The day before the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair in Park Lane, Holmes sat at the writing desk in his Bridge house room; he reached into his pocket and pulled out a much-folded piece of paper, a letter he had received while still in France.  He had read it often since plucking it from the post and puzzling over the familiarity of the hand that had penned the address.  The paper was creased to the point of splitting and the letters were smudged, almost illegible in places; his frequent handling of it had done it no good, nor had his recent dunking in the Thames after abandoning the Time Machine to the deeps.

When he had first received it via the Channel Mail, it had been in much better condition.

Holmes pulled a new sheet of hotel stationary from the desk, uncapped the inkwell and dipped his pen into the ink.

After but a momentary hesitation, he began to write:

My Dear Sherlock, You will no doubt recognise the hand in which this letter is penned.  Though you will naturally be dubious of its authenticity, I assure you it is not a hoax, nor does it in anyway violate the principles of logic by which you…by which we live our lives. It is imperative that you return to London and investigate the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair, which will occur tomorrow night.  I know you will chafe at the thought of an innocent man murdered – as do I  – but I cannot avert it.  There exists an inexorable universal logic, which we disregard only at great peril.  Contact Mycroft and make arrangements; you will also learn of the case of Sir Reginald Dunning. True, our enemy awaits still, but I will ensure he believes Sherlock Holmes is in 221-B Baker Street while he aims his air-gun…yes,
that
air-gun at the window of the room, at the waxen bust manipulated from a position of safety by the good Mrs Hudson.  Afterwards, you will be called upon by Sir Reginald regarding his brother, William, the latest victim of the Vanishments. You must take the case.  More than that I dare not say.”

He started to sign the letter, then thought better of it.  Let the recipient deduce the reality from the ink, the paper, from the dozens of attributes there to be observed by the careful eye. Such an activity would not, of course, help him believe more, but it would allow him to doubt less.  If nothing else, it would occupy his time on the train, then the channel steamer, as he eventually eliminated the impossible to reveal the
highly
improbable.

He folded the letter into an envelope and wrote upon the envelope the name he was currently using upon the Continent, the address at which he was conducting his chemical experiments.  Changing into his disguise of an elderly bookseller, Holmes posted the letter.

The Honourable Ronald Adair died on schedule, and it was the hardest task in Sherlock Holmes’ life for him to let it happen.  Holmes was not an emotional man, hardly given to bouts of sentimentality, but he grieved the death of a man whose only mistake in life was to discover Colonel Sebastian Moran cheating at cards

A senseless death, the papers called it, a murder without purpose.  Holmes knew why the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, come to England from Australia for his mother’s cataract surgery, had to die, but that knowledge did not help him rest easier.

When the boat-train from Dover arrived in London, Holmes, in disguise of the bookseller, observed himself newly arrived from Calais, trailed by the watcher he had picked up shortly before departing the Continent.  It was an odd sensation, especially when, for an instant, he caught his own eye.

From that point there was nothing for Holmes to do but arrive at 221-B Baker Street in the late afternoon, just as another elderly bookseller was colliding with Dr Watson in Oxford Street, and make sure the garrotter Parker saw him enter, and not leave.  He smiled when he saw the wax bust which had been delivered that morning.

He busied himself quietly, looking over journals and scrapbooks, wondering how he had allowed himself to be so long absent from the chase.

That evening, just before Mrs Hudson entered the rooms to carry out instructions given when the bust arrived, Holmes locked himself in his room.  The boredom! The tedium!  The vexation of forced passivity!  Never in Holmes’ life had it ever been harder to do nothing at all, to be relegated to the role of  a watcher in the wings while the drama was played out.  He almost yearned for his once-beloved seven-percent solution to make the ennui bearable, but that was part of the dead past.

Then came the sound of breaking glass, a sharp cry of surprise from Mrs Hudson.

Later, he heard voices, his own and that of Dr Watson.  It seemed ages since he had talked to the dear fellow, though it had not been more than a week.  He fought the urge to wring his faithful friend’s hand.  And he stayed mute while Sir Reginald Dunning explained the plight of his brother.

Only when the outer door had closed for the last time did Holmes unlock his room and venture into the flat.  He turned up the gas, and sat and read and smoked.  In the dim hours of the morning, he put aside his book and walked to the broken window, where the slight breezes were pushing the curtain back and forth. A hansom cab hurtled through the street below, and jounced violently in one of London’s many potholes.  Disturbed from an apparent reverie, one of the passengers looked up at the lighted window of 221-B.

The cab vanished into the darkness.

Holmes turned away from the window and went to bed.

He slept soundly, as if he had been awake a million years.

Oh Lord, there he goes again
, Mrs Hudson thinks as shots crack rapidly overhead.
First ‘VR’ bullet-pocked into the wall…now what? The bloody Magna Carta Liberatum?

Probably nothing, but best to be sure. She turns from the tea tray, wipes her hands on her apron, and goes into the entryway.

“My God!” she cries.

A  dark-jacketed lascar with a filthy bandanna around his throat lies on the stairway, blood oozing from a half-dozen bullet wounds. Unruly black hair shoots from under a seaman’s cap. His dark face is disfigured by an old scar that crawls from left temple to center chin, slicing across thin lips, turning them up in a snarl. A patch covers one eye; the other is tinged with a yellowish cloud.

“You poor man!” she exclaims. “Don’t move! Stay where you are while I fetch Doctor Watson.”

She starts up the stairs.

The injured lascar chuckles after she passes him.

Mrs Hudson halts, takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders and turns to face the now sitting man.

“I think the disguise may be…adequate,” Sherlock Holmes says. “What say you, Mrs Hudson?”

Another deep breath.

“It is a very clever disguise, Mr Holmes,” she replies. “Very effective.”

“Needs work, I think,” he says as he passes her. “Perhaps I shall find time later.”

She starts back down the stairs.

“Will tea be ready soon, Mrs Hudson?” he asks.

“Yes, Mr Holmes,” she answers. “Just about finished.”

“Very good, Mrs Hudson.”

Mrs Hudson starts toward the kitchen when there is a furtive rapping at the door. She throws it open almost immediately, but no one is within sight. She glances up and down Baker Street, but sees only the usual traffic. She trips over a poorly wrapped parcel on the stoop. She picks it up, glances at the loathsome green idol within and sighs with annoyance.

Blasted Cthulhu cultists!

In no mood for their tomfoolery, she shoves the little statue into a closet with the other bric-a-brac.

Entering the kitchen, she sees a vague figure flee from peering through the utility window. She starts filling the clotted cream container. A shadow passes over the window before her, distracting her so that she almost drops the little porcelain cup.

A row of crude dancing men has been drawn on the window with black grease-paint.

Clean that later
, she thinks.
I will be late with his tray
.

Urgent knocking upon the back kitchen door draws her from her task. It is Police Constable Dickerson.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” he says, casting a covetous glance at the biscuits and cut sandwiches. “Seen a man wearing a loudly checked jacket? He may be carrying a knife dripping  blood.”

“No,” she says, closing the door in the constable’s face.

Almost to the tray, she hears a loud, persistent rapping at the front door. With each passing second, the louder and more imperious the rapping. When she opens the door a young woman in a blue dress and dark travelling-cloak almost hits her in the face.

“I must consult Sherlock Holmes immediately, it is a matter of life and death,” the visitor says breathlessly. “He must advise me on whether I should attend Lord Bentham’s party here in London or accept Lady Weatherly’s week-end invitation to her country estate in Surrey.”

“Life and death?”

“Oh, yes, very much so,” the young woman confirms, “and then there is the matter of the masked bicyclist.”

“Hmm.”

“Is that man across the street watching me, or you?”

Mrs Hudson steps forward and sees a hansom cab on the other side of Baker Street, just in front of the empty house. A bearded man wearing a top hat is staring toward her with a goggling blue eye, but he raps the roof of the cab with the silver dinosaur-headed handle of his walking stick and the cab leaps away. Mrs Hudson turns but the young woman is already pounding noisily up the stairs.

“Not my problem,” Mrs Hudson mutters and starts to close the door.

“Post!”

Mrs Hudson takes the package and carries it into the kitchen. She sets the package aside and returns to the tea tray. The ticking from the package is really quite annoying, so she thrusts it into the rinse water in the sink. She will toss it when she has time.

As she picks up the pot, there is a loud crash and clatter in the hallway. Rushing out, she finds the umbrella stand knocked over, again. No one is around, of course, but on the floor are some tell-tale prints…the prints of a giant hound.

It’s that blasted bull pup Doctor Watson keeps
, she thinks as she pulls a cloth from an apron pocket and wipes up the tracks.
At least the dog does not bark in the night
.

The door bursts open and a mob of street Arabs flows around her, clambering up the stairs in their muddy shoes, leaving grease and grime from unwashed hands on the banister and the wall. She slams the door close but it bangs open again to reveal rat-faced Inspector Lestrade looking simultaneously grim and perplexed; one look at the landlady and he flees to the safety of 221B.

The door closes, but someone knocks before she is even halfway to the kitchen. When she sees the caller, she places her hands resolutely on her wide hips and scowls.

“Mr Holmes is not available, as usual!” she snaps. “But Inspector Lestrade is here, and I am sure he wants to ask you about that dead albatross, Professor Moriarty.”

Holmes’ old mathematics tutor runs as if Lord Harry were breathing fire on his tail.

Back in the kitchen at last, the tea piping, the sandwiches cut and the biscuits arranged, she hefts the tray, carries it up the stairs and makes her way to Holmes’ table-side. The others can stare all they want, but no hand-outs to riff-raff!

“Oh, Mrs Hudson,” Holmes says as she moves away. “Do try to be more punctual with the tea next time.”

A deep breath.

“Yes, Mr Holmes,” she says. “Very good, Mr Holmes.”

But she must rush now and leave her lodger – he is about to expound upon 243 varieties of cigar ash, and someone is pounding on the front door.