Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (38 page)

“I’ll make arrangements to move several naval vessels onto the Thames and make munitions available,” the Lord Admiral said. “Mr Giles, please see that the Home Secretary is briefed on the urgency of this matter. Scotland Yard’s river patrol force will coordinate its efforts with the Royal Navy through Commander Brin,”

“I’ll see that the watches at all the docks are increased and ask that each ship mount an armed watch,” Sir Robert offered. “We will be asked the reason for the changes.”

“Make up any reason you want, but I want as few people as possible to be knowledgeable about the nature of the situation that has necessitated these steps. We must not allow a panic to ensue.” The Lord Admiral looked pointedly at the gathered men. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen, and thank you, Mr  Holmes, Professor Challenger, for bringing this matter to our attention.”

Holmes nodded and stood to leave.

Challenger looked to his companion, a question poised upon his lips, yet unuttered. The look Holmes gave him prompted him to keep that question to himself. Once they were beyond the confines of the Admiralty conference room, he could hold it in no longer.

“Blast it, Holmes, you did not say a single word about Laslo Bronislav,” the scientist blurted.

“To what purpose?”

“To arrest him of course,” Challenger said. “He’s behind this whole thing, and the sooner he is in a naval brig, the better.”

“If it were simply a matter of having him arrested, we could have asked Wilkins to do that, but it would have been a useless gesture,” Holmes said. “As I told you, Bronislav is not a criminal in the accepted sense of the word. He may be the motivating force of any amount of mayhem and murder, but nothing could be proved against him in a court of law.”

“What about these creatures?” Challenger demanded. “They are here because of Bronislav’s desire for the idol.”

“Do not let your emotions get the better of you, Challenger,” Holmes scolded. “The law is not equipped to deal with the likes of Bronislav. The official authorities will have better luck with these beings that have followed their image to England; the disposition of Bronislav is our responsibility.”

Challenger asked: “What can we do that the law cannot, and that which itself would not be against the law?”

“Certainly not murder him, if that is what you fear,” Holmes replied with a short laugh. “This is hardly the first time I have been forced to become a law unto myself. It is not that I am morally superior to any man, for I have more than my share of faults and foibles, but I think, at times, I possess an acute moral awareness which the majority of men do not.”

“As Wilkins might put it, the knowledge of good and evil?”

“Perhaps,” Holmes admitted with but the faintest trace of a smile. “Call it what you will, it is a trait that chose my life’s work for me, and made me a guardian of society.”

Dusk was upon the great city by the time they returned to Baker Street and found a telegram from the Pinkerton agent. Holmes frowned, then passed it to Challenger.

“Good lord!” the scientist gasped. “Cecil Whitecliff is dead! An accident, it says.”

“It was no accident,” Holmes replied.

“Barton reports he choked to death on a fragment of bone.”

“A cunning murder,” Holmes insisted. “One that was not meant to be found out till the morrow at least.”

“How does deduction lead you to the verdict of murder in this case?” Challenger asked.

“The timing of the death, mostly, but the manner as well,” Holmes replied. “It is the sort of death that might be experienced with an incautious, slothful and gluttonous man, but I think you know Lord Whitecliff was none of those.”

Challenger nodded grudgingly. “But accidents do happen.”

“And many murders have been hidden as accidents.”

“This cancels our meeting at Hammersmith Bridge.”

“On the contrary, Challenger,” Holmes said. “Our adversary has outreached himself this time. He should have waited to dispose of Whitecliff. He could not know I would send Barton around, and thus reveal what happened prior to tomorrow morning, not that we should ever know of it. Barton has not yet informed the police. I am asking him to hold off for the moment. If the police know, then Bronislav will certainly come into that knowledge as well.”

“Then the meeting at the bridge…”

“A trap!” Holmes cried, “I suspected as much, but now the proof of it has come out. I had not intended that we should ever go there alone, no matter Whitecliff’s pleas for confidentiality, but now I fully intend to trap the would-be trapper, Come, Challenger, we have plans to lay!”

Chapter Ten

Wispy strands of fog freighted with the scents of the darkness-mitered Thames flowed through Hammersmith Borough. It was near midnight. Silence lay heavy upon the ancient hamlet west of Kensington, now all but swallowed by the sprawl of London. The quaint waterfront mansions, one of which was Kelmscott House, formerly owned by Mr William Morris, the noted poet and designer, were unlighted, the occupants unaware of the drama about to be played out in their quiet cobbled lanes.

If all goes according to Bronislav’s plan
, McBane thought.
Whatever that plan may be
.

The area around the bridge was deserted. The only sign of human activity was a steam launch anchored at the dock alongside the bridge, but it had been there when McBane arrived and was obviously unoccupied.

Earlier, he had watched Harkeen hide himself in a dark narrow alley just up from the bridge. There was no mistaking that hulking form, even at a distance, a massive anthropoid shape that would have been more at home in the Congo’s depths than London’s urban jungle. At their initial meeting, it had taken all McBane’s patience and persistence to convince Harkeen to become a harmonious element within Bronislav’s plan. Only two men? Break neck and slit throat, was the simple-minded giant’s desire, and it had taken the threat of non-payment to finally bring him into line.

But payment is not to be his at any rate, is it?
McBane thought grimly. In the pocket of his jacket was the revolver that would end Harkeen’s pathetic existence. No doubt it would like require all six heavy bullets. Yes, a pathetic existence, McBane told himself. Ending it was a kindness, really, a correction of a mistake God should never have allowed the breath of life in the first place, and the brute’s death would be a service to society.

Yet there was no denying the distasteful nature of the act about to be forced upon him by Bronislav’s whims. It was not the sort of thing he did. True, he had killed before, had no moral compunctions against murder, but it was a physical act that went contrary to his intellectual aspirations. Both Moriarty and Moran had ordered hundreds of murders in their times, but when they had deigned to commit the act themselves, and against Sherlock Holmes at that, the results had been disastrous.

How happy he would be when it was all done and he could deliver the object into Bronislav’s grasp. He was to meet Bronislav at The Doves. Actually, he would rather have met Harkeen there to effect the transfer and pay the money promised, but his master’s explicit instructions necessitated he rendezvous in an unpleasant alleyway near the bridge. With murder now Harkeen’s reward, there was no way he would enter a room at a coffee-house with Harkeen and leave a body behind. One need not be a criminal mastermind to see the folly in that.

No, at The Doves he would meet Bronislav instead.

And then…

Then what?

McBane had sought out Bronislav and sided with him because he believed that the mysterious man really had the power to change the world, to twist the warp and woof of reality with powers unknown to science. Bronislav would institute a new world order, and McBane desired to be part of that brave new world, to be a master, to wear the caestus and hold the whip. He still believed in Bronislav’s intent and his ability to transmute that intent into action. What waned was a belief he would ever be a part of that new order, that he would ever be more to Bronislav than a means to an end, and a disposable one at that.

He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. Perhaps their meeting at The Doves Coffee-house would be, and should be, their parting. His destiny might lay outside London, assuming he still had a future after his association with Bronislav. Grasping a small hope, he wondered if he might better seek his desires upon the Continent, or among the ancient warrened cities of the Levant, or perhaps even in a great metropolis of America, where corruption was rampant and crime held so many opportunities. Or was he, he wondered, ignorantly standing in the mouth of madness, shrouded by darkness, companioned by death?

McBane peered through the gathering mist, attempting to distract his mind from the unpleasant task before him, or its possible consequences and aftermath.

The unique ornamental façade of the bridge’s terminus on this embankment of the Thames was barely visible in the gaslight. The sweep of the bridge was discernible against the greater blackness of the river. McBane’s eidetic memory spewed forth such minutiae about Hammersmith Bridge as would be unknown and useless to the masses: first erected in 1827, designed by Mr Tierney Clarke, first bridge to span the Thames based upon the suspension principle, the original replaced just some years ago, christened in 1887 by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. Memories of yellowed news cuttings told him the new bridge was of sounder construction, but unimproved in its suspension design and its roadway not wider than its original twenty feet.

In times of anxiety, McBane often retreated into his filing cabinet mind, It was an odd trait of his, but the more trivial the fact the greater solace he seemed to draw from it, as if he were erecting a bulwark of facts, a redoubt constructed of the information that had become his life. His attention was suddenly taken by the appearance of two figures moving under the gaslamps on the Lower Mall Road, one tall and slender, the other nearly as massive as Harkeen and carrying a package—Holmes and Challenger. McBane felt neither sympathy nor regret, but it was most unfortunate these two men had to die. Their deaths would be a greater blow against society than Harkeen's would be a boon, but hey had been drawn into a struggle against Bronislav, and their deaths were absolutely necessary for the ultimate fruition of his plans.

No compunction against murder, true, but, still the deaths of such men, with whom he felt more commonalities than differences, grated upon his sensibilities. If things had gone differently in his life, perhaps he might have even walked at their sides. But he was who he was, and they were who they were; both had chosen the paths upon which they journeyed, and neither could escape the doom before then.

As he watched from his vantage point, he observed the two figures approach the terminus of the bridge, then pause, looking about. He wondered how Bronislav had lured them to this point in space and time. Certainly it could not have been anything complicated, for Bronislav’s strength, despite his great intellect, did not reside in the formulation of plans and designs. McBride would have felt more confident about the situation had Bronislav left everything to him. As it was, he felt a certain lack of control, and perhaps that, more than anything else, was the source of the anxiety plaguing him.

The men at the bridge waited.

In hiding, Harkeen waited.

Watching, McBane waited, barely daring to draw a breath.

A luminescence gathered in the mist above the bridge, a play of subtle light and shadow that had nothing to do with the feeble gaslamps. It recalled to mind the phenomena sailors termed St Elmo’s Fire, the ragged spheres of light that played upon mast-tops and were often taken as omens. Strands of pale fire writhed and the crawling shadows inside began to coalesce into definite and terrible shapes, reaching outward. If the play of light and shadow was accompanied by any noise, it was not discernible to McBane.

It was, McBane thought, as if a portal were forming between this world and…another.

Something was emerging, McBane realized, something summoned from that dark realm in which Bronislav so easily walked, a realm in which McBane had always wanted to believe but never had, till now. The shadow creature, huge now, stretched forth limbs that had no basis in mundane biology.

As the two men at the base of the bridge took note of the danger above them, the sound of gunfire, split the night. Then McBane swore bitterly—the fool Harkeen had emerged from his hiding place, drawn by the sound of revolvers being discharged. A long knife, what might have passed for a gladius, the short sword of a Roman gladiator, in a smaller hand glinted under the gaslamps and the cold fire above.

Challenger suddenly ripped the covering from the package he carried. He lit a lucifer and ignited a scintillating fuse. A half-dozen men swarmed up from the dock alongside the bridge and began firing weapons at the creature. Challenger threw the explosive. A massive roar split the night. The shadow-beast, which had seemed little affected by bullets, was engulfed in fire.

Men shouted but those petty sounds were lost in a keening cry such as could have come from no earthly throat.

More shots were fired, but not at the beast. Harkeen tottered in his charge toward his prey. He staggered under the impacts of bullets fired by the operatives that Holmes had obviously secreted aboard the steam launch. As tenacious as he was stupid, Harkeen kept on, intent on completing his perceived task.