"Please go on, Constable," invited my master, laying a comforting hand upon his shoulder.
Miles nodded and waved his arms, briefly resembling a hulking crow. He resumed: "Many ragmen were taken very sick all of a sudden. After a while, some fell dead on the ground without warning, but others had great sufferings; you heard them groan and cry. It was heartbreaking, you know. There were desperate fellows who ran screaming around. I have heard of an old woman in violent pain who broke out naked and ran direct to Deptford Creek, where she drowned herself. The disease spread very quickly and in the evening dead bodies were lying upon the ground all about the place ... . Frightful! Doctors were sent for too late, you see; they could save only a few people. They told us it was some kind of very violent and infectious fever."
"A white lie, to prevent a panic," whispered Holmes to my ear.
"What a pity!" went on the policeman. "They were nice folks; sometimes a little bit rough, but nice, very nice."
He shook his head mournfully and added: "Think that the night before, they had a ball ... music ... fireworks!"
"Fireworks?" I wondered.
"Yes, fired from Deptford Bridge, and there was an organ, too ... . It played polkas and waltzes."
Constable Miles drew a long breath and ceased to speak. For some time on, he led us round about Bog Town, and not a sound was to be heard, except the soft squelch of our footsteps in the mud.
At one moment, my master climbed up a big junk heap and looked into the night. It was dark and foggy, and he could only catch sight of the vague shimmering of a stagnant pool down below. There was no point to remain any longer in these grim and repellent surroundings. Holmes shrugged his shoulders and told me that brandy, tobacco; and a hot bath would be most welcomed back home.
CHAPTER 4.
MONSIEUR VICTOR.
My master was just on his way down when suddenly, with eyes accustomed to the darkness of the night, he noticed several moving figures noiselessly deploying themselves out towards his companions. We were waiting quietly for him at the foot of the mound, totally unaware of what was going on, and did not see the shadowy forms slowly creeping around us in deadly silence. At once Holmes knew the full extent of the danger and he shouted with stentorian lungs: "Lads, watch out!"
We were startled by his command but, at first, we did not understand what it meant. So we turned round and stared at him blankly. However, we were not long in realizing the situation, for a mere second had elapsed when came a wild yell, followed by a rustle in the mud, and the attack of a posse of fiends. They were ten or twelve, perhaps more. Their faces were shriveled, their eyes bloodshot and glaring, their long hair disheveled, tangled, and matted.
"Lord bless me!" groaned Gregson.
Indeed, the sight of these repulsive creatures, dashing at us from nowhere in this empty, forbidden place, was truly nightmarish. The inspector sprang back, searching for his gun, and I did the same, but conversely, dropping his lantern, Constable Miles made a couple of swift strides forward. Before the a.s.sailants could react, he had seized the first one by his throat and belt, lifted him high in the air, swung him round, and hurled him clean into the others, who toppled and fell down. This clever and courageous action averted immediate danger and helped to gain a little time.
"Here, lads! Come up! Quick!" cried Holmes.
It was a steep climb to the top of the rubbish heap, one of the tallest in Bog Town, and the rubber outfits were not meant for such sport; nevertheless, the three of us did reach it in a few moments.
"Thanks, Master! I"m glad to be with you again," I said to Sherlock Holmes, who had offered me a helping hand, "and a thousand thanks more for your warning. What would have happened without it?"
"Billy"s right, thank you, Mr. Holmes," said Gregson in turn, "but phew! Speak of a mad rush!"
He panted and coughed, and then said to Miles, who stood stolidly by his side: "Thank you, too, Constable, you"ve been capital. But d.a.m.n it! What a sc.r.a.pper you are!"
The latter nodded unpretentiously with a slight laugh.
For a long time Sherlock Holmes kept peering carefully into the night. The wild men who had attacked us had not pursued us up the mound, and they were now hardly visible in the gloom. It seemed, though, that they were standing round it, dreary and motionless, with their eyes fixed on the top.
"What are we waiting for, Mr. Holmes?" asked the inspector at last. "Can"t we draw our guns and pitch into these freaks?"
"That would be the last thing to do, Inspector."
"Why?"
"Too dangerous!"
Gregson shrugged his shoulders and said somewhat angrily: "I don"t follow you, Mr. Holmes. Aren"t these just a bunch of ragmen off their chumps?
"Who really knows?" replied Holmes evasively.
Miles, who had been prying around during all that time, suddenly fell on his knees and started digging the ground vigorously with his gloved hands, like a dog in search of a bone. Two or three minutes later, he gave a great cry of triumph.
"What did you find?" asked Holmes, laying his hand upon the constable"s shoulder.
"Light your lantern and point it here, Mr. Holmes!"
"All right."
My master followed Miles"s instructions. He whistled a long, low sound of wonderment and exclaimed: "Well, I"m d.a.m.ned! An interesting find indeed, Constable!"
Amongst quant.i.ties of broken gla.s.s, splinters, rotten vegetables, and undescribable odds and ends, Miles. had discovered a hidden pa.s.sage, a sort of dark pit with a rickety ladder which seemed to plunge into immeasurable depths.
"They are coming up!" warned Miles, pointing a finger at the shadowy forms that had just begun to ascend the great dust heap.
"That settles it," declared Holmes sternly, "we must risk it down the pit!" Then turning to me, he added: "Go down first, my boy, and watch out. Here is my pocket lantern: wave it three times when you reach the bot tom; we will then follow you."
Sherlock Holmes, Gregson, and Miles looked eagerly down the gloomy pit. At last they saw my faint light far below. "Let"s go!" said the master quietly. He clung to the ladder, and with a few encouraging words, bade his companions to follow. Slowly and cautiously they descended, the frail ladder oscillating violently with them in the pitchy darkness. At last they reached the bottom, and found themselves at what was the end of a rocky pa.s.sage, which had been roughly hewn out and sloped upwards. Vague draughts seemed to prove that it communicated with the outside. Only half rea.s.sured about the exit, but knowing that the only chance to stop our opponents was at that price, Holmes pulled down the ladder, whose rotten wood easily crumbled into pieces. We all walked swiftly then, in Indian file, through the pa.s.sage. My master"s lantern led the way, awakening bats whose rustle and squeak broke for once the unearthly silence that brooded in there. After some fifty or sixty yards, we reached a large cave, and though it shone dimly in the inky darkness, the light given by the lantern was sufficient to show the nature of our new surroundings. The place was empty save for a deep layer of dust and a strange object that filled half the chamber. It looked at first sight like some enormous insect, lying upon its back, with long twisted legs extended in the air above it, and a glimmering body of irregular shape beneath them. But closer investigation brought a truer explanation. The bent and twisted bands of metal were all that remained of what had once been a huge, iron-bound chest of wood.
"The people who broke it open were in a great hurry," declared Sher lock Holmes.
"Was it full of riches, Master?" I asked him.
"I think so, my boy. No wonder then that ..."
Holmes left the sentence unfinished, for at that moment came a sound as of a stifled moan from the other end of the cave. He turned round and flashing his lantern in that direction, he discovered a man lying on his back, in the thick dust of the floor, his body covered with blood. He had very dark hair and a black, waxed mustache, which brought out the extreme paleness of his face.
"Hey! He"s at death"s door!" exclaimed Gregson.
At once, we all knelt by his side, and my master gently raised his head.
"You"ll give him a little brandy, Billy," he said. "Here is the flask."
The stranger opened his eyes. "Merci, mon vieux," he muttered in French, with a painful attempt at a smile. He drank greedily and a little color came back to his cheeks. For a moment he stared silently, then delirium seized him and he said, or rather shouted: "L"or! ... ratisse l"or! ... et puis pan pan dans les tripes! ... Tout d"meme, me faire ca a moi, Victor! ... Mossieu Victor, le roi des dompteurs de puces!" He stopped abruptly and drew a deep breath, his last one, for the next moment, he was dead.
Silence fell upon the little group. Bats could be heard again, squeaking around in the cave. Then Gregson cleared his throat and questioned: "Tell me, Mr. Holmes, what was all that twaddle the Frenchman said? Can you translate it for me?"
"Hm!" replied my master, setting his hand to his brow. "You see Greg", he simply meant that someone stole the gold kept in the chest, and fired a pistol at him, Victor ... Mr. Victor, king of the flea trainers!"
CHAPTER 5.
FIREWORKS.
"In Paris," began Francois Le Villard, "the Folies Bergere and the Moulin Rouge are large music halls that draw crowds of wealthy night birds; but less sophisticatedly, on the boulevard, to the four winds of heaven, stand the small booths, pet.i.tes baraques, as we call them. Here, there is a zest in the air which is absent from more expensive places, and a diversity of entertainments that is truly amazing. Think that, without spending a centime, you can dawdle along from parade to parade, and gaze at such performers as monkeys riding bicycles, plumed wizards crunching gla.s.s or swallowing swords, Arabian girls doing the belly dance with enormous snakes around their neck, cavemen eating fire, Chinese spitting it ... and many, many more!"
The French detective paused. He leaned back in his armchair and for some minutes enjoyed silently the gla.s.s of sherry wine my master had served him. But I, who was all ears, and could not wait to know the rest, asked: "Tell me, Monsieur, was Monsieur Victor one of these entertainers?"
"Yes indeed," said Le Villard, gazing with half-closed eyes at the liquor through the finely carved crystal, "and not the least one, believe me, young man! His show attracted a lot of people in Montmartre. You gave twelve pence to a blond girl who sat behind a bra.s.s grille, and you entered the booth: it was a plain, rather cramped place with no chairs, lit a giorno by a big electric bulb hanging from the roof. In the center, on a table, was laid a sort of fish tank-but an empty one-which had the shape of a large suitcase and was shut by a gla.s.s lid. When some twenty people had been admitted, an invisible barrel organ started playing a lively march and Monsieur Victor came in. He bowed at the audience, smiled, twisted his waxed mustache, did this and that, then rolled up his left sleeve. When the music was over, he took a pair of tweezers, opened a pillbox, picked up a few black tiny things which looked like pinheads, and laid them carefully on his arm ... . These were fleas."
"Fleas?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, and that"s how he fed them."
"You mean, with his own blood?"
"Well, a good drink never harmed anybody, you know!" retorted the French detective with a mischievous smile. He finished his sherry wine and went on: "Now the show really began. Monsieur Victor plucked off the fleas one by one with the tweezers, and put them in the fish tank. All sort of minuscule accessories were displayed in it, like a tiny cardboard sleigh or a cart built with toothpicks and four collar b.u.t.tons: well, he"d hitch up couple of fleas with hair to one or the other, and make them draw it on a distance of a few inches; or he"d pick up two fat ones and make them ride a seesaw; he might also organize a race between half a dozen others; sometimes he"d make them jump over obstacles like a small pile of matches or through a wedding ring ... . It was very clever indeed."
"Are you serious, Monsieur?" I wondered.
"Most serious, Billy. It may be staggering, but it is the honest truth. Monsieur Victor really deserved the t.i.tle of "king of the flea trainers," and the audience always gave him a big hand."
I would probably have asked many more questions about the man we had found agonizing in a cave the night before, if Mrs. Hudson had not appeared at that very moment. She stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, with indignation in her eye.
"What"s the matter, Mrs. Hudson?" asked Sherlock Holmes with a smile.
"Pah! They"ll muck up the roofs fifty yards around and break our tiles, no doubt!"
"What with?" wondered my master.
"Fireworks!" she sniffed.
"Fireworks?" I exclaimed. "What do you mean, Mrs. Hudson?"
"Pshaw! Don"t you play the fool with me, young man! It"s yourself who gave them permission this morning to put in the whole kit and caboodle on the roof."
My jaw dropped. "Me?"
"You!"
"I don"t understand," said I.
"d.a.m.n it! I do!" cried Holmes abruptly: "But ... but ... what"s going on, old man?" wondered Le Villard in turn.
"Most abominable things! Presto! Follow me, Francois!"
Pushing Mrs. Hudson aside in his haste, my master reached the door in one single stride and rushed up the stairs all the way to the attic; there he climbed up a ladder at breakneck pace, banged open a skylight, and landed on the terrace roof. It was pitch dark outside and at first, he could see absolutely nothing.
"I"ve got a lantern, let me light it, saperlotte!" exclaimed Le Villard, who had just joined him; but, at the very second, he was b.u.mped into by someone or something and he collapsed on the ground with a cry of pain. Strangely enough, a second shrill cry echoed to his in the gloom, a short distance away.
Just then the moon came out from behind a great bank of clouds and flooded the sky with its brilliant and ethereal radiance. To his great amazement, my master found himself in the presence of a young girl wearing a nightgown. She looked terrified.
"What are you doing up here, miss?" he asked gently.
"I ... I don"t know ... . I"m a bit of a sleepwalker at times ... . I woke up here a moment ago ... and ... ( )h my G.o.d!"
A shudder of terror pa.s.sed through her frame as she cried, pointing a trembling finger at something behind the detective"s back: "look! It"s coming back!"
Sherlock Holmes turned round. He could not help giving a start for what he had seen was truly abominable: somewhere in the distance, its huge figure outlined against the sky, a dreadful creature was floating over the rooftops, waving menacingly at him. It had a white, fleshless face-almost a skull-with two greenish glows deep in the eye sockets and long, long red hair flowing like flame all around it.
Bang, bang, went my master"s gun.
The ghost shook violently then flew away into the air with a hiss of anger. Reaching St. Pancras, it ascended its steeple at great speed, up to the lightning conductor. It whirled round it for three or four seconds, then impaled itself on its spike most violently.
"Devil a bit!" cursed Sherlock Holmes. His face had hardened, and for a long time, he stood up silently in the wind battered night, casting circular glances upon the one thousand and one roofs of London which glimmered faintly in the misty moonshine. When at last he turned back to tell the fair sleepwalker a few comforting words, he felt mystified and puzzled, for he realized at once that she had made the most of his confusion to disappear.
CHAPTER 6.
PLAGUE OVER LONDON.
Sherlock Holmes, Francois Le Villard, and myself were seated in Gregson"s office at Scotland Yard. The inspector had greeted us warmly and called for a pot of tea.
"Well, it"s time to have a good chat, isn"t it?" he said, looking about him as in search of approval.
My master nodded. He lit his pipe and began: "A fortnight ago, my excellent friend Chief Inspector Francois Le Villard paid a call on me to seek my help. He meant to confound a French fairground entertainer called Monsieur Victor, for he knew the fellow was in fact a trafficker in all sorts of illegal goods, and he thought that he was coming to London for some very fishy reasons."
"Hem, may I ask what they were?" said Gregson.
"Eh bien, you see, Inspector," replied Le Villard, "in Paris, Victor was involved in a very big business of body s.n.a.t.c.hing. Fairgrounds offered him great opportunities: there are so many miserables and down-and-out people hovering about, whose disappearance goes unnoticed. His underworld friends gave him a helping hand when it came to bringing fresh corpses to dissecting tables. All in all, a simple, easy and very profitable trade, parbleu!"
The Frenchman sipped his tea and resumed: "Victor was a very clever rascal, and the Surete could never collect serious proofs against him. Nevertheless, I kept a watchful eye on him and lately, by searching once again his caravan while he was out, I came across a most interesting doc.u.ment: this was a half-burnt letter in the stove; it made allusions to an appointment Victor had with a certain Karolina Szokoli at Highgate Cemetery"s side entrance, late at night. Diable! For me, it undoubtedly meant body s.n.a.t.c.hing, and I told myself that, at last, here was my chance to confound him. The date of the appointment was missing, having being written on the burnt part of the letter, but some thing told me it would take place soon, probably on one of the nights of the forthcoming week. So I packed up my things and crossed the Channel at once."