Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (18 page)

“What sort of transaction?”

“A private transaction.”

“Well, that was the nature of Kasavian’s business, wasn’t it,” the rumpled man said. “It’s a wonderment that some poor soul didn’t cosh his skull in long before this.”

“Why are you looking at us like that?” Lady Cynthia demanded. “We only arrived a few moments before you did.”

“So you –“

“No, it’s quite true,” Reginald insisted. “When I examined the body, it was quite apparent he had been dead only a few minutes at most. If you would start treating us as witnesses rather than suspects for a moment, you might consider that the murder is still in still on the –“

“What’s going on here?” demanded a uniformed constable now filling the doorway; he then saw the two detectives. “I beg your pardon, I did not see you standing there; may I be of assistance?”

“Yes, Constable Barnes, there has been a murder,” the tall detective explained.

“Crikey! Mr Kasavian?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, it had to happen sooner or later.” The constable mused. “These two do it?”

“They claim not,” said the rumpled detective.

“Did you say the murderer might still be here?” the other asked.

“Yes, that’s what we’re trying to tell you,” Lady Cynthia answered, her impatience showing through her alarm. “We heard a sound upstairs, just before you came to the door.”

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” the short man demanded.

“Barnes, you go to the back and make sure no one leaves that way,” the taller detective directed. After the constable clumbered through the house to the rear entry, he locked the door and turned to his partner. “You stay here with Lady Cynthia and make sure no one escapes this way.”

“I should go with you.”

“And leave these two alone to get into mischief? I think not!” He looked to the actor. “You come with me, Sinclair. And don’t go wandering off.”

“Yes, sir.”

Reaching into his coat pocket, the detective pulled out a vintage torch and led the way up the dimly lit stairs. When they reached the first floor landing, Reginald suggested they split up and search, but that idea was met by a steely glare.

The hallway in the upper storey was not long and had six doors leading off it, all closed. At the first, the door was opened and the light flashed about from the entry, Reginald peering in as best he could and noting all objects within. It was a bedroom, spare and unoccupied. The other four rooms which they searched were differently intentioned but all lacking denizens. At the sixth door, they paused a moment, and from within they heard a slight shuffling sound. A pale light which they could see under the door at their approach was suddenly extinguished.

Reginald stood to one side where he was directed. The detective quietly tuned the knob, then pushed the door open, playing the light of his torch about slowly. This room was more well appointed than had been the others, apparently a study. Furniture of teak and mahogany dominated the room, two walls were lined with bookcases, and the windows were shielded with maroon curtains of thick velvet. Behind the huge desk was a large oil painting of a bucolic landscape that had been taken down and leaned against the wall, leaving a discoloured rectangle; in the midst of that area was a safe, its steel door hanging open.

“Come out of there and don’t cause any trouble – I’m with the police.”

At the order, a vague figure stood from a crouch behind the desk and a paperweight flew from out the darkness.. The object struck the detective’s wrist, knocking the torch away and plunging the den into a darkness little relieved by the dim light spilling from the corridor. The detective rushed in, Reginald behind him, and they both collided with the fleeing fugitive.

Reginald heard a solid thud and then a painful groan from the detective. Ignoring the still-throbbing aches in his own body, Reginald flung himself at a shadow, wrapped his powerful arms about it, and went tumbling into the corridor like a starfish in a death-grip with a clam.

“Let me go!” a man screamed. “He deserved to die! That bastard ruined my life! Killing him was no crime!”

Despite the thrashing and pounding, Reginald hung on, even though his own body was screaming for him to let go. Footfalls pounded up the stairs, the beefy constable and the rumpled turtle, followed by the staccato clipping of Lady Cynthia’s heels.

When the two detectives and the constable grabbed the murderer, Reginald let them have him and rolled away. Toward the den.

“Settle down boyo!” the constable cautioned. “You’ve been nabbed, and that’s that.”

The short detective fastened an ancient pair of handcuffs to the still-struggling man’s wrists. As they clicked closed, however, the man not only ceased his writhing, but slumped, as if all his bones has dissolved, and were it not for Constable Barnes he would have slumped to the floor like a dropped jellyfish.

“I’m arresting you for the murder of Gregor Kasavian.”

“Killing him was an act of justice!”

“That may be, but I must warn you that you do not have to say anything unless you want to, though if you fail to mention any fact upon which you will rely on in court then…” And the detective droned on.

“Where the deuce is Sinclair?” the tall detective demanded.

“Over here, sir,” Reginald said, staggering from out the den.

“What were you doing in there?”

“I fell in when you pulled that chap free,” Reginald explained. “Here’s your torch, by the way.”

“Thanks,” said the detective, giving Reginald the glimmer eye.

“Like a limpet on a hull, you was,” Constable Barnes remarked. “Where did you learn a move like that?”

“Oh, that,” Reginald murmured self-consciously. “Just a Japanese wrestling move I picked up somewhere.”

The two detectives glared.

“Gentlemen, you have your culprit, so are we free to go?” Reginald asked. “We shall of course make ourselves available at your convenience for a statement.”

“But, Reginald, I –“

“I am sure you are sure to put this behind you,” Reginald interrupted. “We have no further business here.”

“Yes…yes,” she stammered. “It has been such an ordeal.”

Reluctantly, and after obtaining assurances of availability, the detectives allowed Reginald and Lady Cynthia to leave the death house. He grasped her wrist and pulled her along; she longed to flee, and yet she knew she had to stay. In the end, however, she let herself be pulled out again into the foggy night and to the waiting Princess.

“But, Reginald –“

“Just drive,” he urged, “before they change their minds. Those two are just cracking, so it’s only a matter of time before they figure things out.”

“A matter of time? I don’t understand.”

“Drive, Lady Cynthia, drive.”

She drove, putting distance between them and the house in Soho. Her anxiety about a job left undone was tempered by Reginald’s constant glances through the rear window. There were questions she needed to ask, but she was afraid of the answers.

“Pull over here,” he instructed, and she did.

They were in the midst of Waterloo Bridge.

She was surprised when he clambered out of the motor, and even more so when he reached into the rear seat and retrieved the wing mirror she had tossed in after the accident. Flustered and nervous, she shut off the motor and joined him at the railing.

“Thank you for all you did, Reginald, but I fear it was for naught,” she said sadly. “It’s only a matter of time before the police come across father’s letters, and then –“

He reached inside his greatcoat and withdrew a packet of letters tied together with a thick black cord. Speechless, she took them and flipped through them.

“But these are…” She was breathing so hard, she could hardly speak. “I don’t…how can this be? These are father’s letters. Where did they come from?”

“Kasavian’s safe,” Reginald explained, beaming. “When the constable took that chap off my hands, I skittered back into the den. The safe was hanging open, and I figured that if your letters were anywhere they would be there. And they were.”

“That was why you were so keen to fly.”

“Indeed.”

“Oh, Reginald.”

He took the letters from her grasp, slipped the cord over the curve of the wing mirror, and tossed them over the edge of the bridge, arching them toward the water. They vanished into the mist. They heard rather than saw the splash as the packet vanished into the depths of the Thames.

“They’re gone forever,” he told her. “Down into the deep. The river’s current will dissolve the ink and sweep the words into the vastness of the Atlantic.”

“Thank you, Reginald.” She reached into her bag and withdrew a thick envelope. “This was for Kasavian, but I suppose that you –“

“Perish the thought, Lady Cynthia,” he said, gently pushing the envelope back toward her. “It gives me the utmost pleasure just have been of service to you.” He paused. “Every week on the telly, I get paid to the right thing as Sherlock Holmes; it feels even better for Reginald Sinclair to do the same. It feels good to
not
be Sherlock Holmes.”

“Oh, Reginald, if you’re not Sherlock Holmes, I don’t know who is.”

She kissed him passionately on the cheek.

She wanted to give him a lift home, but he finally convinced her that he needed to walk, that the fresh air – at least as fresh as the air ever got in London – would be good for him. He smiled thinly as he watched the tail lamps of the cream-coloured motorcar vanish into the swirling mist. He gripped the stem of the purloined pipe between his teeth and started the long walk home.

Reginald Sinclair awoke to a splitting headache, the streaming sunlight and a telephone that would not stop ringing. For a moment he panicked, thinking he was late getting to the studio, then remembered the events of the previous day and scowled blackly; then he remembered the events of the previous evening and smiled. Finally, he answered the telephone. It was his agent George Pogues.

“Hullo, George,” he said. “I’ve got a few quid put aside, so I’ll be taking a short vacation, two or three months, to take care of a personal matter that came up last night. I’ll give you a ring when I want you to scare up another role for me.”

“Are you daft, man?”

“Are you?”

“Haven’t you seen this morning’s papers?” the agent demanded. “’Sherlock Holmes catches murderer’.”

“You’re joking?”

“Not at all, my boy,” George assured him. “It’s the sort of publicity that money just can’t buy. ‘Police credit actor Reginald Sinclair, star of the popular television drama
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street
, with the detection and capture of one Edward Rollin Stark, 23, of Golders Green, confessed killer of Soho resident Gregor Kasavian, reputed to be a notorious blackmailer and extortionist.‘ Well, it goes on from there, Reginald, with some drivel about the victim, but who cares about that?”

“Does it mention a girl?”

“A girl? Let’s see. Yes, here it is…it just says you were accompanied by a young lady who was not identified.”

Reginald sighed with approval.

“Who is she, dear boy?”

“No one.”

“Well, I don’t suppose it matters,” the agent allowed. “The important thing is that all this publicity has made those plonkers down at the studio rethink their poxy decision. Now, they want to renegotiate your contract, for another three years, at least. We have an appointment at four.”

“Not with Craven!”

“Craven? That pillock? He got the sack.”

“All right, George, I’ll see you then,” Reginald said. “But I still want that vacation.”

“Whatever you want, my lad,” George agreed. “After all, you
are
Sherlock Holmes.”

Smiling, Reginald rang off.

No, I’m not Sherlock Holmes
, Reginald thought.
Sherlock Holmes doesn’t know Lady Cynthia Smythe-Lambert.

A trio of war machines made their way up the River Thames like grotesque children in a wading pool. The steamers and sailing vessels along the way were as toys broken in a tantrum – all were shattered or in flames.

Smoke from the wrecks billowed upward to join the funeral shroud covering the once-great city of London. At myriad points in the metropolis black pillars rose to feed that roiling blanket of soot. Normally, the air would have been filled with the sounds of commerce, not just the shrieks of ships’ whistles and flapping of sails, the industrious roars of man’s machines and the shouts of stevedores, but the unceasing murmur of more than a million souls engaged in the business of life; now, there was the quietude of death, broken only irregularly by the undulating howl of an alien war machine:

“
Ullaloom…Ullaloom…
”

That primitive and unearthly cry was echoed by other war machines unseen, like the answering calls of carrion birds feeding in open graves.

Two men moved cautiously along the road out of Canning Town in East London, careful to remain hidden from the machines making their way up the Thames. It was clear to them that the war engines would make land somewhere in the vicinity of Blackwall.

Both men were tall and lean, but one was a little shorter than the other, with greying hair and a trim moustache, and while he was afflicted with a slight limp his movements were those of a man given to military preciseness. The taller of the two was dark of hair and long of face, with an aquiline nose and a wide brow; his procession from one hiding place to another was both fluid and furtive, possessing the lithe grace of someone long accustomed to stalking difficult and elusive prey – a man hunter.

A hissing sound suddenly filled the air.

The noise was very like that which accompanied the firing of the fighting machines’ heat-rays, so the men immediately dove for shelter. Moments later, however, as the sound waxed loudest, a shadow passed over them, darkening an already dim day. Above, about thirty feet up, a dull metallic craft overflew them, roughly oblong in shape, bristling with protrusions of obscure intent and venting occasional jets of noxious steam.

“That flying machine!” gasped the shorter man after it had passed. “It seems headed for the East India Docks. Look! Two more of the flying machines are coming in from the northwest, from over the City.”

“Notice, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, gesturing toward the war machines in the Thames with his pointed chin, “The Docks are apparently the intended goal for these three as well.”

The flying machines had only appeared within the past week, but the crafts wading up the Thames were of a type that had become all too familiar to Britons – indeed the entire world – since the advent of the Martian invasion in the spring of the fifth year of the Twentieth Century. A generally hemispherical cupola with bulbous protrusions and glistening eye-like windows sat atop an articulated tripod that moved with a smooth organic gait, below which hung the gleaming brass of the heat-ray weapon. Several long metallic tentacles extended from the base of the cupola, writhing like the questing limbs of a sea-devil in search of prey. Unlike the standard fighting-machines, however, these were not hunters, for they were smaller and none was equipped with baskets to hold their human harvest.

“What can it mean, Holmes?” Doctor John Watson asked, peering hard at the exterior of the docks. “A manufactory area? It would make sense in the heart or London.”

Sherlock Holmes shook his head. “The city is only important to the Martians because it still holds humans for their hearths.”

“You give credence to those stories then?”

“Unfortunately, they are more than stories,” Holmes replied. “Had I not seen photographic evidence of humans being processed for consumption, submitted by the American agent Captain Phillip Strange, I would still know it true – an inescapable deduction.”

“Could the docks area then…”

“No, the wind  would carry the stink of the slaughterhouse, and there is none.” Holmes pointed out.

“Then my suggestion of a manufactory…”

“Is incorrect,” Holmes finished. “There are no clanging sounds of construction, no fires or rays, no steam or smoke as at Horsell Common, or at the Surrey complex to which we directed artillery fire.”

“Then what?” Watson demanded.

“Observe, Watson, the three tripods we followed are not the only walkers headed for the docks,” Holmes said. “And, see, two flying machines are rising up to take flight as the others come in. What does all that activity suggest to you?”

“Messengers or scouts perhaps, maybe issues having to do with command and control,” Watson mused. “Something along the lines of a regimental or theatre headquarters?”

“Excellent, Watson,” Holmes encouraged. “An army is an army whether the soldiers are red-coated lads with hearts of oak, or loathsome tentacled beasts with oily leathery hides; either way, they follow orders, and those orders have to come from somewhere.”

“We must report what we have found,” Watson said.

“As yet, we have found nothing,” Holmes said. “It is one thing to deduce the truth of a matter, but quite another to produce the evidence that will convince a cautious mind, as we discovered in the matter of Moriarty and the Greenwich Observatory.”

“Rum thing that,” Watson murmured as he watched the tripods emerge from the Thames and enter the East India Docks.

“And here, we must not only convince the military of the truth of our deduction, and that a strike will cripple the enemy,” Holmes pointed out, “but that it is worthy of our expending needed materials and risking lives.”

“We have to get into the East India Docks itself,” Watson said grimly. “Where we can observe directly.”

“Indeed we do, old friend,” Holmes agreed. “The question is how.

“Ullaloom…Ullaloom…”

The eerie howl uttered by the tripods was obviously some kind of communication between the Martians, but like so many things about the invaders and their machines, it remained beyond the comprehension of the greatest scientists of the Empire. This sound was quite close, and they heard the tread of metal pads.

“Quick! This way, Watson,” Holmes said urgently, breaking into a run. “One of the smaller tripods is nearing us.”

Watson followed close behind.

They both knew it was not one of the huge war machines, for one of those hundred-foot behemoths would certainly have towered over the nearby warehouses; nor was the tread as heavy as one would have expected from such a dread Goliath. Still, they were surprised when they paused to peer around the corner of a building, for this particular machine was not even as large as the three scouts that had waded up the Thames to the Control Centre suspected to be hidden at the East India Docks.

It was no more than twenty feet tall, most of that height being three articulated legs which protruded directly from the sides and rear of a wide metallic cupola rather than from the base, which was more usual. At the forward portion of the coppery craft were three bulbous protrusions of thick greenish glass, giving it the semblance of an obscene insect, and three heavily lensed lamps for night-work. A black barrel mounted at the front seemed to be its only armament; in larger fighting machines, the housing of the heat-ray weapon was mounted below, but here there were only three short antennae, which moved slightly from time to time, accompanied by short arcs of electricity. Three prehensile tentacles extended from the front of the machine, writing continuously as if possessed of animation.

“That machine is totally different from what we’ve seen,” Watson whispered.

“The Martians are diversifying their forces,” Holmes replied with a frown. “The weeks of fighting since the start of the invasion have placed the Martians in an enviable position. With humanity on the run, so to speak, they can now impose the full range of their technology and culture upon the Earth. It may play to our advantage in finding out what is going on in the docks?”

“How’s that, Holmes?”

“If we could commandeer that tripod,” Holmes explained, “we could probably just walk in.”

“The devil you say!”

“First, we have to get the occupant out,” Holmes said. “Unless it opens up, we do not stand a prayer of getting in.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Watson queried.

“Rely to the creature’s curiosity.”

“Curiosity is a trait unlikely to be found in a rampaging beast,” Watson pointed out. “The Martians so far have shown nothing but a desire for carnage and destruction. What makes you think you can expect anything different from this one?”

“The Martians are obviously quite different from humanity in many ways, but, like us, they are tool-using creatures, and, being such, they must base their tools upon their own physical forms and intellectual processes,” Holmes explained. “The cylindrical projectiles in which they hurtled to our planet and the standard Martian fighting machines told me much about them, but the many variations which we have observed just this day have told me so much more.” He tapped his temple with a lean forefinger. “Data, Watson. As I have told you many times, I cannot make bricks without straw, and these clever Martians have provided me with much straw.”

“What is your plan, Holmes?” Watson asked.

“Notice how that fellow seems to be inspecting the iron-works building,” Holmes said. “I believe it’s seeking a way in.”

“What of it?”

“Even should it get the large bay doors open, it will not be able to enter while inside its walking machine,” Holmes pointed out. “This creature is not a scout, but an evaluator, relaying all its information to a superior. Probably within the East India Docks.”

“Relaying…”

“Note the antennae beneath the machine, how they quiver and spark.”

“Wireless?”

“A form of it at least.”

“Wait, it seems to have figured out the door’s mechanism,” Watson said.

“Quickly, Watson, go around the back and find a way inside before it can get the doors open,” Holmes urged. “Stay out of sight, but make sure you have your revolver at the ready.  I am trusting my life to both your marksmanship and timing.”

“You can depend upon me, Holmes.”

“Stout fellow!”

Watson vanished around the far corner of the brick building that was hard upon the Bow Creek tributary of the Thames, within shouting distance of the passages and basins that comprised the East India Docks complex. Holmes watched surreptitiously as the craft’s arms manipulated the chains and pulleys; finally, the doors began to creak and rattle open, but as Holmes had predicted, even at their widest, they could not accommodate the machine’s bulk.

The craft stepped back, the pads of its articulated legs clanging against the cobbles. The cupola ducked lower, swung a bit to the left, then reversed. It eased forward in something of a crouch, then backed away, the tripod legs raising the compartment to its fullest height. The way it moved to and fro brought to mind the sinuous undulations of a serpent contemplating a possible prey, or the attitude of a man sizing up an unvisited and possibly dangerous location; seeing the organic smoothness of those movements in an otherwise ungainly mechanism provided Sherlock Holmes even more straw for his deductive brick-making.

The antennae quivered and sparked as the machine suddenly stood absolutely motionless; long moments later, they again quivered and sparked, but this time at a different vibration.

Information sent
, Holmes thought,
orders received
.

Whether the operator within had come to a decision or a decision had been provided – Holmes suspected that later – the craft moved closer to the opening, then began to settle to earth, the two side legs telescoping inward while the back leg changed its angle; as the cupola lowered, steams and gasses vented from various joints. In less than a minute the cabin struck the cobbles with a soft
click
, and all was silent for several more moments.

Holmes reached into the pocket of his coat and closed his fingers around the weighted crop with which he was never without. After what seemed a very long time – although his ever-logical mind told him it was only a matter of seconds – a round hatch-cover opened atop with a gentle
whoosh
and a charnel stink that assailed Holmes’ nose  even at that distance. Then the occupant slithered up and out, oozing down the copper hull.

Holmes had been among the first people to see the Martians as they emerged from their cylindrical spaceships in the sand pits of Horsell Common, and one of the very few to survive the initial use of the invaders’ heat-ray weapon. The Martians, as Holmes had observed them, were a bit larger than an American Grizzly Bear and vaguely resembled octopi in that they possessed whip-like tentacles and a calcareous beak. Their hide was leathery, completely hairless and had an oily sheen. Its eyes were large and without pupils.

The Martian disembarking from this machine – if from Mars it actually was, for Holmes had grave doubts – was somewhat different, lending credence to his idea of diversive evolution among the invaders. It was much smaller, as Holmes had expected from the size of the machine, not quite five feet in height, and though it still possessed tentacles they were much shorter, less active, almost atrophied, but in one of them it carried an ominous black rod. The beak was also smaller, more refined. Despite the reduction in size, the head was almost twice as large, suggesting cognitive faculties of a higher order, and the eyes, seemingly bigger on the smaller creature though they were about the same size, glistened like unfathomable onyx. The skin still had an oily sheen but instead of being mottled brown and black it was aswirl with intricate patterns of white and yellow on a background of a purple that would have pleased a Byzantine emperor.