"Then perhaps I deduced it from the way you stared at the water, and from the expression upon your face."
I was about to remonstrate with him for this impossible explanation, and then I remembered some of the deductions which Sherlock Holmes had made, based only upon the scantiest clues, and I held my tongue.
The Doctor gazed out over the Serpentine. Across the other side of the lake, someone had lit a fire. The tiny orange glow put me in mind of the moment when Mrs Prendersly had opened her mouth to reveal a h.e.l.lish tongue of flame. I tried to remember how beautiful she had been, how entranced I had felt, but all I could see was flesh charred black, like an overcooked side of beef The aroma of roasting meat rose once again to my nostrils: with revulsion I realized that it was the smell of Mrs Prendersley"s cooked body which had somehow become impregnated into my clothing, like the odour of a strong cigar, and I felt my gorge rise. I pulled my hip flask out of my pocket and swallowed a burning mouthful of brandy.
Gradually my stomach relaxed. Beads of sweat stood out on my forehead, and I felt hot and weak.
"I cannot accept it," I muttered finally. "I am a physician. There must be some cause for Mrs Prendersley"s death."
"You find yourself paddling in the shallows of mystery, unaware of the currents, oblivious to the nearby depths. As Shakespeare so nearly put it: there are more things in heaven and earth, Watson, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"Nonsense," I bl.u.s.tered unconvincingly. "The world is rational. Everything has a cause, a reason. All that remains is to discover it."
The Doctor said nothing, but raised his arms over his head so that his umbrella was pointing at the tumultuous clouds overhead. A fresh gust of wind stirred the ripples of the jittering lake to greater heights. He chanted something in the teeth of the wind, hurling the words into the skies. Slowly he lowered his arms towards the water. I moved back, suddenly aware that I was alone with a madman and that my revolver was in the drawer of my desk back in Baker Street.
The tip of the Doctor"s umbrella touched the water, and the waves vanished in a circle around it, some twenty feet across. Where there had been a storm in miniature upon the face of the Serpentine, a spreading area of the lake lay placid and still. I stared, astounded, at the transformation.
"I don"t believe it!"
The Doctor turned towards me.
"There is a reason for everything," he said. "But not necessarily an obvious one. I will see you tomorrow."
And with that he walked off, into the dark. I gazed after him for a few moments, then back at the lake, where feathery ripples were just beginning to stir its surface. A gust of wind caught my hat and almost s.n.a.t.c.hed it from my head.
The fire which had been lit across the far side of the lake glowed with an inviting warmth. I was tired and cold, mystified and hungry, and I wanted to be home. I flapped my arms a few times to get my circulation moving, then turned to leave.
A spindly figure scurried in front of the fire.
A sudden shudder ran through me, but it wasn"t due to the cold. That shape . . . Although I had seen it but briefly, there had been something unnatural about it, something thin and febrile, and urgent. I listened intently, but apart from the rustle of leaves and the occasional cry of a goose, I heard nothing.
Eventually, feeling rather foolish, I walked off towards the nearest gate, and a hansom to take me home.
". . . And I cannot tell you how unsettling it was to see the lake go from a state resembling the English Channel in winter to one like my shaving bowl in the morning!"
Holmes glanced across reprovingly from the other side of the table. We had just polished off a brace of woodc.o.c.k with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, accompanied by an appealing little Montrachet and followed by a spotted d.i.c.k with custard. I was replete and content, and had spent most of the meal regaling Holmes with the events of the day.
Holmes had eaten well. He varied between times of immense gluttony and periods when he would pick at his food like a bird, but today, to the great pleasure of Mrs Hudson, he ate all that she placed before him with relish.
He had kept up a constant.string of questions concerning my tale - descriptions of Mrs Prendersly"s room, her clothes, the weather, any unusual sights or sounds in the room - but I could tell that he was no nearer an explanation of her death than I was.
"That," he said tersely, "is perhaps the simplest element of this entire case."
"Nonsense, Holmes. The man is a magician. He has powers beyond human imagining. I would not be surprised..." and I lowered my voice, as if the Doctor could hear me from wherever he had gone for the night, ". . . if he was responsible for that poor woman"s fate. Who knows what powers he might have?"
"No more than any other mortal."
Holmes retrieved his slipper from the fireplace. Whilst Mrs Hudson cleared the plates away and retired, he removed tobacco from it and packed it into his old black clay pipe, the unsavoury companion of his deepest meditations. I poured myself a gla.s.s of port to round the meal off.
"You have mistaken the superficial for the deep," he explained, applying a match to the bowl and sucking deeply. "Ah, that is better. This death is a nasty business, quite a four-pipe problem. No, the matter of the lake is easily solved. You have all the information in your hands, Watson. You are starting from a position where you do not believe it is possible, then trying to explain it. I, however, a.s.sume that it is perfectly possible, then attempt to use whatever clues I have to cast light upon the means."
"I"m not sure I follow."
"Let us start from the facts. The lake calmed. What can have that effect upon disturbed water?"
"Why . . . nothing, surely. Nothing but witchcraft."
"I have told you before, Watson, there is nothing in this world but that which we make ourselves. Have you never heard of the phrase, "pouring oil on troubled waters"?"
"Why, yes. I had always taken it for a figure of speech."
"One with a basis in truth. Oil can indeed calm waves, if of the correct consistency. It reduces the surface tension of the water, decreasing its ability to form peaks and troughs." He sucked noisily upon the pipe. "I would commend you to a study of the cla.s.sics, Watson, especially Bede"s Ecclesiastical History of AD 731, in which he relates how St Aidan gave a vial of oil to a priest who was about to undertake a sea voyage, saying: "Remember to throw into the sea the oil which I give you, when straight-away the winds will abate, and a calm and smiling sea will accompany you throughout your voyage". A veritable miracle, for those unaware of the trick."
"But the Doctor . . .?"
"His umbrella was hollow, and contained a reservoir of oil. The raising of hands and the chanting were designed partly for atmosphere and partly to distract your attention whilst he used some form of release mechanism to liberate the oil. Benjamin Franklin, the American inventor and politician, used to carry out the same trick, I am reliably informed, and for the same reason: to impress credulous observers with his powers."
"But Holmes," I protested, "this is all pure speculation."
"Not so, Watson. Remember the pool of oil in our coat rack earlier, when the Doctor removed his umbrella? A leak, I think you will find."
He smiled triumphantly, then frowned as his mind recalled other matters.
"If only the death of Mrs Prendersly were as amenable to reason."
"Did you have any success with your own expedition?" I ventured.
"A certain amount," he replied, moving from the table to his favourite chair, close to the fire. "After checking that Doctor Minor was still safely ensconced within the high walls of Broadmoor, I had decided to take a look at Mack "The Knife" Yeovil, one of the men who supposedly hold the security of the Library in their hands and who, incidentally, are involved in much of the pickpocketing, extortion, prost.i.tution and gaming between here and Whitechapel. An odd choice by the Vatican, one might say"
I settled back in my chair whilst Holmes described, in dry and humourless terms, a picture of the dregs of society upon which d.i.c.kens could have dined out for years. Despite his jibes at my nascent literary hobby, Holmes had no ability at story-telling. Thus, for the sake of my readers, I have refrained from repeating Holmes"s words as he spoke them: rather, I have taken the broad flow of events and woven them into a more pleasing narrative. This, then, is what he told me.
The smell of roasting chestnuts and excited animals hung like a miasma over the Hackney marshes. Holmes, disguised in fake whiskers, shabby moleskin trousers, a check shirt and a leather jerkin, moved through the crowd with a sullen expression on his face and a cloth cap pulled down over his eyes. He had been working his way gradually inward from the fringes of the throng for some time: moving slowly so as not to excite suspicion and keeping his ears alert for any conversations which might prove of interest.
It had taken no great stretch of his abilities to determine the location of Yeovil. The entire underworld had been buzzing for months with word of the bareknuckle fight to end them all. The location had only been decided at the last moment, in order to deny the police the chance of stopping it, but all anybody had to do on the day was to ask in any pub or bawdy house, and they would be told. "Ackney"s the place. Go to "Ackney. Everybody"ll be there."
Everybody, in this instance, would certainly mean the man who headed one of the biggest and most dangerous gangs in London. Hackney was traditionally on Yeovil"s patch, although the word over the past few days was that Mr Jitter was also going to be there, and that some rough justice would be meted out to a couple of unfortunates who had transgressed the brutal and unwritten code of the underworld. Holmes had a shrewd idea who those people might be.
A train from Liverpool Street had deposited Holmes within walking distance of the fight, and the steady stream of people heading into the low bushes and spa.r.s.e gra.s.sland of the marshes was sign enough that he was in the right area. He slouched along, hands in pockets, watching, without appearing to, for Yeovil or Jitter.
The crowd was large, almost exclusively male, and so threateningly brutal that Holmes realized why they didn"t fear the police, now that they had settled. A team preparing the ground could be moved on, a convoy of vehicles bearing the stalls, the sideshows and the bareknuckle fighters could be stopped, but a few thousand drunken and belligerent louts were a law unto themselves. The police, quite sensibly in Holmes"s opinion, were keeping well out of it.
Holmes took a cup of warm gin for a ha"penny at a stall, contriving to slop most of it on the ground as he quaffed. The drink gave him an opportunity to look around. Every few hundred yards, groups of men were gathered around a fenced-off area of ground in which dogs or metal-spurred c.o.c.ks were fighting in a flurry of action and noise. The men at the back were stretching and craning their necks: the men at the front were shouting and cheering. All over, money was changing hands.
Far in the distance, on a slight hillock, four poles had been stuck into the ground and linked by ropes. Already a crowd of several hundred had gathered around the ring, although it would be several hours yet before the fight started. The c.o.c.k-fights, the dogfights and some bareknuckle bouts were intended to whet the appet.i.te for the major attraction which, according to custom, was to occur about an hour before sundown. Two groups of caravans parked a few hundred yards away from the ring probably held the fighters.
Holmes moved nearer one of the fenced-off areas, elbowing and swearing his way through the crowd. If the gang leaders were anywhere, it would be where large crowds were pa.s.sing large amounts of money, and this crowd looked larger than most.
"Ere luv, fancy some fun for a tanner?"
A haggard woman with a painted smile, a tattered dress and no teeth tugged at his arm. He shoved her away with a curse, and slipped through the crowd until his chest was pressed against a row of wooden staves which had been plunged into the ground to form a barrier with no gaps.
Brutal men with long poles, sharpened to killing points, were s.p.a.ced around the perimeter of the arena.
Something more than an ordinary dogfight was planned for here, that much was obvious.
The ground was soaked with blood already, and sc.r.a.ps of flesh and fur littered the area. A number of bouts had obviously already been fought.
The crowd near Holmes suddenly parted and a man clambered into the arena holding a crate. Bewhiskered and better dressed than the rest of the crowd, although not by much, he climbed up on top of the crate and gazed around challengingly.
"All right, then," he shouted, "you all knows why you"re "ere. I got a little something for you which"ll make everything else in this stinking field look like a flea circus! You"ve never seen anything like it, gents, I can promise you that. Straight from Sumatra, it is, and it killed two sailors on the way over an" all. A dark and fearsome beast the like of which has not been seen on these sh.o.r.es afore. We got the Natural "Istory Museum offrin" us money for it, we got the Zoological Gardens offrin" us money for it, we got so many offers you wouldn"t believe to take this evil creature off our hands, but we saved it for you this very afternoon, gentlemen. For the first time in this or any other country, see the foreign beast take on three British bulldogs!
Place your bets, gents, place your bets."
"Come on, let the dog see the rabbit then," a rough voice yelled out from the crowd.
"You want a look?" the master of ceremonies said. "All right then." He jumped off his crate and moved to one side of the arena, where the staves were interrupted by a solid gate. Throwing the crate back on the ground, he used it to clamber back over the staves, and pulled it up after him.
"Ready?" he yelled to the men with the sharpened poles. They nodded. He lent over the gate, flicked the catch and quickly pulled himself back to safety.
For a long Moment, nothing happened. The crowd held their breath. The men with the poles leaned over the fence, tension evident in their faces.
The gate slowly opened as something pushed against it from the other side.
A greyish-green form slunk into the arena. It was about the size of a great dane - some five or six feet from nose to tail - but thicker-set and built closer to the ground. Its head was flat and pointed, its ears lay furled along the side of its head. A ruff of coa.r.s.e black fur extended from its neck along its spine to where a thick tail flicked restlessly, but otherwise it appeared to be covered with rough scales. Pure red eyes, with no distinction between pupil, iris or cornea, took in everything around it - the crowd, the fence, the men with the poles - and it snarled its defiance. Two enlarged incisors at the front of its mouth gleamed with spittle.
As if the creature was not strange enough, it only had one rear leg. For a moment Holmes a.s.sumed that it had lost the limb in some other bout, but then he saw how thickly muscled the remaining one was, how it sat centrally beneath the creature"s pelvis, and how nimbly the creature pivoted on its rear leg and scampered around the ring. It had obviously been born that way. Holmes had seen nothing like it.
"It"s some b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring of a rat!" yelled a wag in the crowd.
"A rat like you"ve never seen before and will never seen again," the master of ceremonies yelled back. "A giant rat, caught in the depths of Sumatra, the most vicious and dangerous beast you ever set your peepers on."
As the crowd jostled for a better look, Holmes tried to place it. The resemblance to a rodent was obvious, despite the ma.s.sive rear leg and the scales, but certainly not rattus rattus or rattus norvegicus. Holmes had read of rhizomys sumatrensis, the great Sumatran bamboo rat, but this bizarre monstrosity bore little relationship to the descriptions. It looked to Holmes more like some tripodal lizard. He watched as it made a deceptively casual scuttle for the nearest section of fence, culminating in a short leap powered by that ma.s.sive rear limb. The crowd jumped back as one, all except for Holmes and one of the men with the poles, who lashed at the beast with the sharpened end. It twisted in mid-air and landed gracelessly on the blood-soaked ground. The level gaze and low hiss with which it favoured the man seemed to promise much for later. He blanched, and wiped his brow. Holmes leaned closer, watching the way the creature moved.
Judging by the matting of the fur around its neck, the apparent softness of its scaled but almost human hands and the casual manner with which it treated the crowd, Holmes judged that it had seen the inside of a circus tent or a travelling exhibition more recently than it had seen Sumatra. The thought made Holmes"s blood run slightly colder. What next: tiger fights in Hyde Park? Panther races across Tower Bridge?
Everybody in the crowd bar Holmes was placing bets, and the odds heavily favoured the creature. Holmes wasn"t so sure. Its lack of scars and the nervousness with which it sniffed the blood which had been spilled during the earlier dog-against-dog bouts indicated that it was a newcomer to this sport. The dogs, of course, were not.
The ringmaster was watching carefully from the sidelines, and as the betting began to tail off he raised a grimy handkerchief.
"Gents, are you ready?"
A howl went up from the crowd. The creature grew agitated, as if it knew what was about to happen.
The ringmaster dropped his handkerchief.
Three squat, scarred bulldogs raced through the gate. Quick hands immediately fastened it behind them. The creature whirled at the noise of their yapping, jumping backwards in surprise, and snarling. The crowd leaned over the barrier, screaming encouragement. The first bulldog saw its prey and flung itself straight across the arena. A sudden presentiment, perhaps the first whiff of an unfamiliar scent, or a close look at the giant beast, brought it up suddenly. Too late: the beast"s claws raked deep gouges across the bulldog"s nose. Gushing blood, it shied away. The crowd cheered.
The other two bulldogs, more careful than their companion, circled in opposite directions around the arena. The beast switched its attention back and forth between them, retreating all the time until it was against the staves. A shower of chestnuts from the crowd above distracted its attention: the dog to its right took a chance and dived in to clamp its jaws on the beast"s huge rear leg. The creature slashed back with claws extended, but the dog had dived out of range. The beast tried to follow, but the third dog nipped in from behind and fastened razor-sharp teeth on its rump. The beast whirled around the arena, trying to get its teeth or its claws into the maddening distraction behind it, but the bulldog was out of reach, and hung grimly on.
The second dog launched itself through the air and sunk itself into the creature"s throat. Fresh blood gushed across the arena and sprayed the faces of the crowd. Shouts, screams and obscenities filled the air. Faces contorted in a feral rage, eyes glittered in blind, mad l.u.s.t.
The creature rolled over onto its back and scrabbled with its back leg, trying to dislodge the dog that had anch.o.r.ed itself firmly on its throat. Deep gashes appeared across the dog"s stomach, but still it held on. The third dog relinquished its grip and sunk its teeth firmly into the creature"s stomach. The first dog, still streaming blood from its muzzle, took the chance to run in and out, and nipping at the beast"s exposed groin.
Blood gushed across the creature as its claws found an artery within the second dog"s stomach. The dog"s grip weakened on the beast"s throat, and a shake of the beast"s head flung it against the side of the arena. It fell to the ground, panting rapidly, its guts protruding from a gaping slash in its stomach.
The creature was weakening. It attempted to turn over and shield its vulnerable underbelly, but before it could climb to its feet, one dog darted round to attack its face whilst the other burrowed beneath it to continue work on the stomach.
The creature lasted another few minutes, but the fight was already over.
The bout ended with the creature and one of the dogs dead, another dog with wounds to its face, a third howling in maddened triumph, and a few men considerably richer at the expense of a large number of others.
Holmes had spent much of the time scanning the faces of the crowd, searching for Yeovil, but with no success. As the bout finished, and he could move away without attracting attention, he caught sight of a familiar pocked face. Jitter!
Holmes followed at a distance, noting how Jitter was surrounded by a knot of hard-faced punishers carrying the spiked cudgels known as "holy water sprinklers". They were heading for the roped-off area that Holmes had spotted earlier. A lone figure awaited them in the centre of the ring, standing beside a wooden block: a squat man with long, wispy hair and enormous sideburns. He was dressed in a long poacher"s coat and a shabby broadbrimmed hat, and Holmes had seen him before. It was Mack Yeovil.
Jitter ducked under the ropes and stood on the other side of the block. The two men - the most ruthless of London"s many criminal gang leaders - barely acknowledged each other.
Holmes drifted closer to join the growing curious crowd.
"There"s somethin" that needs to be sorted out," Yeovil snapped in a gritty voice, "an" it needs to be sorted out in public. It"s not often Mr Jitter here and I are together. More often than not, we"re at each other"s throats."
There was a murmur of a.s.sent from the crowd.
"There"s a job we both do together," Jitter added. "We guard something. It don"t matter what it is, but the point is, something"s gone missing from it, and it"s made us look bad. We - "
"We"ve made it clear what the punishment is," Yeovil interrupted. "Our lads, the ones doin" the guardin", they didn"t spot the sc.u.mmy gonoph. Or p"rhaps one of them was paid to look the other way. That"s what we"re goin" to find out."
He gestured and two men were pushed through the ropes into the ring.
Each one was held firmly by a large punisher.
"Now you know the form," Jitter said to the men. Despite the calmness of his voice, they were white and shaking. "You was the ones on duty outside the place during the week when the swag was nicked. Either you was both stupid, and let the gonoph get through, or you took an alderman or two to look the other way. Now I"ll make it easy for you. The man who admits taking some other b.u.g.g.e.r"s shilling, I"ll let him take his chances in the ring with one of Yeovil"s bludgers. If you don"t talk . ." He glanced over at Yeovil, who had pulled a huge cleaver from his coat. ". . . Then Mack the Knife will be relieving you of your hands."
The first cowering figure - a runtish teenager with wispy red hair - was pushed forward by one of the punishers. His right hand was forced down onto the block.
Yeovil smiled down at him.
"Did you break faith with the family, Frank?"
"No, Mr Yeovil," Frank squealed. "I swear, I searched everyone who came out. n.o.body was carrying anything. I swear it on my dear Mother"s grave!"
"Remember boy," Yeovil said gently, "if you admit it, I"ll let you fight like a man. If you don"t..."
Frank was crying now.
"I swear, Mr Yeovil..."
The cleaver flashed in the sun and buried itself in the block. Frank screamed. A fine spray of blood misted the air. His hand clutched convulsively at the wooden surface, dragging itself an inch or two away from the cleaver.