Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) (41 page)

Challenger handed the lantern to his companion and did as he was asked, pulling the indicated lever. It was an old mechanism, certainly of the last century or earlier, but it had been recently oiled and had seen usage. It resisted his efforts at first. Obviously, it was the work of at least two men to pull it. He grasped it tighter and pulled. The muscles in his arms bulged and popped with the effort, and the sleeves of his jacket split. His efforts were rewarded when the lever finally swung over. A grating sound filled the air moist, of hidden gears and chains moving in the darkness. The wall opposite the two men suddenly swung over.

“I’ll be damned,” Challenger breathed.

Holmes lowered the lantern’s panel, plunging the cellar into near darkness. Bluish light shimmered upward.

“Using rented steam launches, the Dynamiters traveled the river under the cover of night, delivering explosives to prearranged locations along the Thames. Those were picked up by confederates and sympathizers,” Holmes explained.

The air was clear above the river and it sheened softly with the light of a crescent moon and the cold stars. Across the river were the lights of the London Docks. To the left Challenger could just make out the twin ornate spires of Tower Bridge. River traffic was sparse at this hour but still present. It moved with a laziness absent from the day. Looking upon this bucolic riverine scene, the lifeline of the Empire, Challenger cold hardly believe it the conduit of so much death and destruction.

He heard the soft, rhythmic stroking of a steam engine.

A shadow moved across the river, turning toward the tannery.

Holmes raised the lantern’s panel just enough to let a flash of light escape, then lowered it. He sent the same signal twice more.

A steam launch, low to the water and obviously very fast, approached the waterfront entrance of the tannery. Without slowing, it whipped about. The pitch of the engine changed, metal groaned, and the small vessel continued its approach to the tannery’s farthest dock, but stern first. A constable wearing the distinctive uniform of Scotland Yard’s River Patrol was at the helm, along with a navvy tender. At the stern stood Baton holding the idol, this time not hidden by paper but loathsomely naked to the world.

“I think there’s something in the water, Mr Holmes,” Barton said as he climbed from the boat, “but I can’t be sure.”

“If you followed the course I laid out for you, you attracted the notice of the creatures,” Holmes said.

“Followed it, we did, Mr Holmes,” reported the constable. He started to tie the boat to the dock.

“Loosely, constable, very loosely,” Holmes warned. “And make sure the engine remains at a slow idle. It is imperative the boiler need not be heated to make steam.”

“Aye, Mr Holmes.”

“Give me that,” Challenger said, taking the idol.

Barton released it with a shudder. “Gladly, Professor.”

“Barton, you and the others, up and outside,” Holmes said.

“But the launch,” the young constable protested.

“You have your orders,” Holmes reminded him.

“Aye, sir,” he said.

Barton, the River Patrol constable and the navvy swiftly made their way to the stairs leading up and out of the cellar.

Holmes plucked at Barton’s sleeve, delaying him. “Ensure they leave the area,” Holmes whispered. “You know what you must do.”

A certain grimness passed across Barton’s broad face. “Yes, Mr Holmes. Good luck, sir.”

Holmes turned to Challenger. “You know how this must end.”

Challenger nodded. “Men drove the Orms from this isle in the time of polished stone using the best traps and weapons their minds could devise. We must do the same, and for the same reason.”

“You still have time to follow Barton.”

Challenger shook his head.

“Good man.” Holmes clasped Challenger’s shoulder. “Have you ever piloted a steam launch?”

“Upon the wilds of the Zambezi.”

“At the proper moment, then, you must be at the controls of the police launch,” Holmes said. “You must not hesitate on my account. If you do, we shall both perish—that is not part of my plan.”

Any protestation Challenger might have made was silenced by other noises. At first he thought Barton was for some reason returning, but the sounds above were hesitant, furtive. A doorway opened, the stairway creaked. Soft footfalls made their way down.

Suddenly Holmes lifted the lantern’s light panel pinioning a slender figure in the brilliance. The stranger threw his arm across his eyes against the glare, almost losing his balance. With a great measure of dignity, the man continued to the base of the stairs.

“I am glad to finally make the acquaintance of two such esteemed men,” the man said, his voice holding an accent so faint it failed to betray his homeland, even to Holmes’ keen ear. “I regret it must be under such circumstances and for so fleeting a moment.”

“Fleeting, Mr Bronislav,” Holmes said. “Surely long enough.”

“Only long enough to ensure your deaths,” Bronislav replied. “My desires have already been delayed too long by the incompetent men formerly in my employ.”

“Such as McBane?” Challenger asked.

Bronislav nodded knowingly. “I knew he was the weak link in my chain. He led you to me?”

“Only indirectly,” Holmes replied. “We did not know who our watcher was until you were followed to The Doves and met him.”

“And murdered him,” Challenger added.

Bronislav bit his lip but showed no other sign of emotion. It had not been McBane, but himself. He did not, of course, suffer any pangs of conscience, but he did regret his rashness. McBane’s death might have been put to better use. If McBane had died falsely, what then of Jensen? He forced the thoughts from his mind.

As his eyes became accustomed to the glare, he saw the idol of dread M’tollo in Challenger’s grasp. His fists clenched convulsively and his thin face reddened with rage.

“Give that to me!” he growled. “It is mine! I paid for it!”

“With the blood of others,” Holmes retorted.

“Yes, with blood and gold,” Bronislav replied savagely. “At least a half-dozen men have died by my hand or at my command in my quest to possess that idol. I will not hesitate to kill two more who stand in my way.”

“You appear unarmed, Mr Bronislav,” Challenger observed. “Your threat seems a hollow one.”

“Appearances are
always
deceiving.” Bronislav lifted his arms and uttered several guttural barks in a language which Challenger, who had a passing familiarity with most living languages, and quite a few dead ones, could not fathom. The lantern threw the intruder’s gigantic shadow upon the wall. For a moment, there was silence, then soft whispering and muttering sounds came to the men. The air about Bronislav seemed to seethe with movement, but they saw nothing physical. It almost appeared as if Bronislav’s looming shadow was joined by a nebulous host of insubstantial tracings, vague entities coalescing around him, moving outward.

Neither Holmes nor Challenger drew back.

“Fools!” Bronislav spat. “Like all humans!”

Challenger and Holmes drew revolvers, but neither man had a chance to fire. Nor did Bronislav have an opportunity to complete whatever deviltry he was setting into motion. From the Thames-fronting dock came huge splashings, like whales erupting from the deeps. Homes whipped the lantern around, and all three men beheld creatures, the likes of which had not slithered upon British shores for uncounted generations.

The three tremendous creatures that slithered and surged out of the Thames and into the cellar all resembled the loathsome image of M’tollo, and yet they were all horribly different. Challenger, who had always prided himself on being a keen observer of nature and a precise recorder of its wonders and mysteries, would in years to come have difficulty bringing together in his memory all the elements he saw in those few terrible moments.

Certainly there were tentacles and claws and spines and heaving oily skin and appendages of dubious intent. There were great shining eyes like electrum platters, and other organs that seeped fluids. There were patterns upon the skins of the beasts that defied the strictures of geometry. There were all those things, and much more, revealed in the brief flashes of a swinging lantern, in sparks of cold fire from the creatures themselves.

Challenger tried, but could not bring all those elements into one comprehensible whole. Beyond what he could see and smell there was also something else, a quality emanating from the minds of the Orms, like heat from an unseen fire.

He fired upon the creatures, but without effect. The hatred that flowed outward from the trio of beasts toward Challenger was almost overwhelming. It was the fury of gods.

“Give that to me!” Bronislav shouted, reaching toward the idol. “Do not let them have it!”

“Now!” Holmes yelled.

Challenger propelled the coveted idol into the far reaches of the black cellar, away from the human and the Orms who all desired it so obsessively. At the same time, he and Holmes lit fuses laid earlier, when the dynamite was moved in. Smoke and fire filled the chamber. Holmes smashed the lantern. He and Challenger fled toward the waiting police launch.

Challenger clambered to the controls, and Holmes threw off the loose mooring rope. With a blast of steam and a quick look back by Challenger, the launch leapt from the dock.  Holmes jumped at the departing vessel, rolled on the deck with the agility of an acrobat, then stationed himself near the stern, weapon ready.

No sooner did they clear the river portal than the tannery’s vast cellar was filled with roiling fire and deafening noise. Flames shot out over the river, momentarily engulfing the police launch. Holmes ducked below the railing, but in the glare of the blast saw Bronislav clutching the idol, surrounded by Orms, battling the creatures with flickering ethereal lights and devouring shadows. The image lasted less than a second. In that brief moment, the logic and rationality of Holmes’ mind battled with the fabulous nature of what he observed. He could not, like other men, deny the truth of what he saw, blame his observations on figments of his imagination, for that would have been a denial of his very nature, which was to observe, to deduce and to understand.

Sprawled upon the deck, singed by flame and deafened by concussion, he replayed that last instant in his mind, as he would many times in the ensuing years. Finally, the coolness of the river washed over him and the burning tannery grew small. He felt the launch veer toward the Tunnel Pier off High Road on the other side.

They paused in mid-river. Challenger joined Holmes. The blast had illuminated the river from Tower Bridge to the Lower Pool. The tannery still burned fiercely. A thick pall of smoke rose toward the crescent room. The current began to carry the launch slowly back toward Bermondsey.

“Are they gone, Holmes?” Challenger asked. “Were the Orms destroyed by the explosion?”

“They were animals, not gods,” Holmes replied. “Nothing could have survived an explosion of that magnitude.”

“And what of Bronislav?”

Holmes shook his head. “He chose to walk a dark path, and now he has come to the end of it.”

“He might have made it to the stairs had he chosen to  abandon this quest for the idol,” Challenger pointed out. “He might have escaped before the explosion.”

Again Holmes shook his head.

“How can you be sure?” Challenger asked.

“Barton’s final orders,” Holmes replied. “They were to block the entrance after he saw Bronislav enter.”

Epilogue

“The newspapers and the public seem well satisfied the Irish Separatists were hoisted on their own petard,” Holmes said, tossing aside the
Daily Chronicle
.

“It’s what they want to believe,” Challenger said. “They must never know the truth of what transpired. Hopefully no one will ever make a connection between the explosion and what happened in Rotherhithe.”

“People will forget,” Holmes said. “Most people have already attributed the reports of monstrous creatures to an overabundance of gin. With no illumination forthcoming, the incident will become one more mystery in a city of mysteries.”

“On my way here I checked in on our friend Wilkins.”

“How is he?”

“Well on the road to recovery.” Challenger smiled. “Angry that he was not with us at the last.”

“How much does he know?”

“I told him everything, but I don’t know how much of it he believed,” Challenger answered. “Considering his role in the matter and what he endured, I thought he deserved to know.”

Holmes nodded. “Quite right, old fellow.” He added: “But you did not stop by to report on Wilkins’ condition. When do you leave for South Africa?”

“How did you know?” Challenger demanded. “I only decided this morning to make the journey.”

“There’s no magic involved,” Holmes assured him. “You arrived suddenly when your stated plans were to rest. Also, you made a point to visit Wilkins and inform him of what transpired, knowing you would not be present after his full recovery. You have a heavy overcoat draped over your arm, though today’s weather is fine, hardly requiring such a garment, though on the open sea it would be quite necessary. Protruding from your overcoat pocket is a document bearing the name John T. Rennie of 4 East India Avenue. Mr Rennie is part owner of the Aberdeen Steamer Company, which has a ship, the
Natal Queen
, departing this afternoon for Durban. The obvious conclusion is you have decided to visit South Africa, have purchased passage from Mr Rennie, and are in the process of putting your affairs in order prior to leaving the country.”