Sherlock Holmes-The Army of Doctor Moreau (18 page)

I am only too aware that, having criticised Watson’s handling of my case notes, I am now in a decidedly precarious position. Though hardly so precarious as Watson, kidnapped from the street and at the mercy of a mad man and his terrifying menagerie.

As for whether I can satisfy his imaginary readers—of this, a case that will likely never be read—only time will tell. Certainly, I can do no worse. If his editor ever has cause to read it and is concerned that it is lacking in excitement I hereby give my permission for him to insert a superfluous boat chase or fist fight. I trust that what few intelligent readers my Boswell has left will have the good sense to skip such juvenilia and move straight on to the facts.

I must confess, the conclusion of the Moreau affair was somewhat tedious. From that point on it was little more than battles with inhumane monsters beneath the streets of London, none of the really interesting cerebral problems that feature in my better cases. Watson rarely talks about those, the affair of the Doomsday Book Murder for example, a conundrum solved entirely in repose on my chaise longue—fourteen hours of the most thrilling mental arithmetic, logical deduction and abstract contemplation. One day I shall write it up myself, as a beautifully cold and precise novel. It shall be the pinnacle account of my career.

But, for now, let us cover up our agonised boredom and talk of monsters and madmen.

But I dash ahead of myself (no doubt in apathetic determination to have the matter done). First there was the examination of Mitchell’s house.

I had no doubt that Watson would soon realise that Mitchell was our man. After all, it was by far the most obvious solution. While Moreau had published frequently he had obviously never put pen to paper on the subject of creating animal hybrids. Whoever the current perpetrator was, he clearly modelled himself after Moreau and yet wished to preserve his anonymity (the pig’s mask could have simply been Grand Guignol but I was willing to bet that it was a practical consideration too). Therefore we were after someone who was known to us who had had direct experience working with Moreau. Of the four people to match that description, three of them were dead. It was hardly a complex conclusion to reach.

But why? That question still stood. An answer to that and a possible clue as to the location of his laboratory (for only a fool
would entirely pin their hopes on a vicious criminal with the head of a dog) drew me to investigate Mitchell’s home.

Mycroft commanded Fellowes to accompany me. This was somewhat irritating as the man insisted on talking despite having nothing more to say. Trying to think clearly next to such a source of endless noise is like trying to play the violin next to a dynamite explosion. It was a long and irksome journey.

“Here we are,” I announced in relief as we reached Mitchell’s home. Fellowes had been talking about his favourite music-hall tunes, a phrase I considered an oxymoron, so the timing couldn’t have been better, as I had spent the last few minutes in mortal fear that he might begin singing some of them.

The house was part of a small terrace, one of those dreary suburban properties that clog up our city, the sort of place clerks live.

“Mitchell will have long gone,” I said to Fellowes as we walked up the front path. “He will have left shortly after Watson’s visit. Knowing that we were investigating the matter he will have known we would return to his doorstep soon enough, only an idiot would sit and wait for such an eventuality.”

Fellowes reached for the door handle. “Will we need to force our way in?” he asked.

I put a hand on his arm. “Perhaps, but let us proceed with caution, it would not be beyond Mitchell’s skills to have left a trap for us.”

Fellowes tried the handle. “It’s not locked,” he said, pushing the door open gently.

I hooked my cane around his arm and pulled him back from the doorway. “All the more reason to assume there’s danger,” I insisted. “Mitchell is making it as easy as possible for us.”

Fellowes nodded. For all his verbal diarrhoea he was a professional when it came to security. “Stand well back then, Sir,” he said, “and keep out of the direct line of the doorway.”

I had already done as much, naturally. I once had a suspect prepare a catapult of broken glass behind his office door, determined to shred the face of his pursuer should they visit. Luckily for me he was as competent a layer of traps as he was an embezzler. Lestrade was left to pick up the pieces when the trap triggered early, spraying the inside of the room with its load.

The door opened and nothing came flying out at us.

Fellowes, still inclined to caution, inched towards the doorway and looked to the floor for signs of a tripwire.

“It’s dark in there,” he said, “but there is something …”

There was a loud hissing noise and Fellowes fell back, a viper darting at his face.

“Keep back!” I shouted, leaping forward and lashing out with my cane.

The serpent was not alone, a nest of them thrashed wildly just inside the door, mouths wide open, fangs bared.

“Something’s riled them,” said Fellowes, now standing at my shoulder. “They’re nervous things normally. Saw my fair share of them in India—the tail-end of one anyway, as it vanished into the brush.”

The snakes darted for the doorway, and Fellowes and I had no choice but to beat and stamp at them with our feet, better that than let them escape out into the street where they could bite some unfortunate passer-by.

“If we’d walked right in …” said Fellowes.

“Then we would have been bitten several times over,” I added.

I sniffed the air and noted a chemical tang I was familiar with. Looking at the door I could see a line of twine extending from the top of it to the door-jamb, then extending out into the gloom of the entrance hall.

Fellowes stepped inside, a lit match in his hands. “We need more light on the subject,” he announced, lighting the gas lamps.

“Careful!” I shouted, one last snake uncurling from the bracket of a wall sconce.

“Damn it!” he shouted, pulling back his hands in alarm. “Nearly had me then.”

He took my cane and tugged the snake from the light fitting. “Nasty little brutes,” he said as he brought his boot down on its head.

“Cottonmouth snakes,” I explained, “from North America. They are mean-spirited in their natural environment but these were encouraged. When you opened the door you pulled that string …” I said, pointing at where it was tacked along the wall. At the far end of the hallway stood a large wooden case, its trapdoor open and a glass beaker up-ended inside it. “The string tugged the trapdoor open which in turn tipped a beaker of what smells like formic acid onto the serpents.”

“No wonder they were in a bad mood.”

“‘No wonder,’ indeed. They would naturally have lashed out.”

“Aye,” said Fellowes looking at the dead snakes with some guilt, “them and me both.”

“It can’t be helped,” I said, cautiously opening another doorway off the hall.

“You sure you want to do that?” asked Fellowes. “Probably a pack of tigers in there.”

I opened the door. It led onto a small sitting room, with dusty
chairs, an ill-kempt rug, and a long-cold fire grate. I estimated the room hadn’t been used for about fourteen weeks (give or take a few days). But then Mitchell was not likely to have entertained many guests.

“There is nothing here to interest us,” I said, and moved to the next door.

Opening this, I was faced with an entirely different sight. This had been Mitchell’s study, the room where he had met Watson.

“Check the other rooms,” I told Fellowes, to get him out from underneath my feet. “But be careful in case he has left any more specimens to greet us.”

“Righto,” he said, and began a slow circuit of the house.

Mitchell’s desk was virtually empty. A single sheet of paper was placed in its centre, like a portrait framed in a wide mount, to offer emphasis.

I picked the sheet of paper up, not entirely surprised to note that it was a letter addressed to me:

My dear Mr Holmes,

Sorry to have missed you but it was clear to me that if you were investigating it could only be a matter of time before you came knocking on my door. I flatter myself that I caused no suspicion in the mind of your colleague, Dr Watson, but am not so confident that I could manage the same with you. Your reputation is, after all, somewhat daunting.

It is no great imposition to leave. This has become my second home of late now my work grows apace. And what work it is! You will soon see what I am capable of, and not just me but the countless other species we share this planet with. For too long,
mankind has forgotten its place in the animal kingdom, Mr Holmes, we have forgotten that we are no more than another species of mammal, another mouth to feed on this packed Earth. We think we rule, but only because we have stamped out every other creature, choked it with our smoke and poison, buried it beneath our tarmac and brick. The richness that we have destroyed, Mr Holmes, the diversity that is lost to us—it is a crime greater than any of the petty affairs you have turned your attention to over the years.

But fear not, I am intending to redress that balance. I have learned from one of the greatest enemies of animal-kind, that abuser, that false god, Moreau. His methods are now turned against his intentions. He wanted to subjugate other species even further, make them work our factories, clean our streets, fight our wars. Well, they will fight, indeed they will, but the Army of Dr Moreau is not one he could ever have imagined, it is a force that will put the arrogant humans in their place once and for all. We are the future, Holmes. We are tomorrow. Fear the Law!

Yours,

Albert Mitchell

“What have you got there?” Fellowes asked, having finished his tour of the house. “Anything useful?”

I handed it to him. “In the sense that it supplies motive,” I said. “It never fails to irritate me that the things that will always obfuscate an investigation are the peculiarities of the human mind. How difficult it is to predict, how impossible to plan against when it will not follow a logical pattern.”

Fellowes handed the letter back. “Sounds nutty as a fruitcake to me.”

“My point precisely.” I put the letter in my pocket and began a more thorough search of the office. Mad or not, Mitchell was not stupid; there was no evidence that could lead us to his underground lair.

“Show me the bedroom,” I asked.

“Righto.”

Fellowes led me through to Mitchell’s chamber and I spent some time investigating the soles of his boots and the cuffs of his trousers. They were at least of some use, showing me several distinct mud traces that narrowed matters down. Still it was not enough.

“Nothing?” Fellowes asked.

“Nothing,” I conceded. “There is only one way to proceed. Straight into the lion’s den.”

I sent Fellowes off to report to Mycroft and returned to Baker Street expecting to find Watson, no doubt livid with irritation at my behaviour. Instead I found two other gentlemen entirely.

“Johnson!” I said. “You got my message then, I was concerned that it would arrive too late.”

“Nah, Mr Holmes, I got it all right, and I were only too happy to come, weren’t I?”

“Same goes for me,” said the other fellow, jumping to his feet and standing before me, nervously wringing his cap between his hands. I’m afraid he has a habit of that sort of thing. He has grown up to be somewhat in awe. Only natural of course, I was a dominant force in his childhood and inspired him to his current trade.

“Wiggins?” I said. “Good to see you, I heard of your success in finding the stolen ruby of Balmoor, congratulations!”

“It was a simple enough case, Mr Holmes, I’m sure you would have made short work of it.”

“No doubt,” I admitted, choosing not to mention that the location of the gem and the identity of its thief had been clear to me by the time I was halfway through reading
The Times’
coverage of its loss.

Wiggins was a graduate of my Baker Street Irregulars. In fact he had always been their guiding hand, the others had looked up to him just as he had looked up to me.

For some time I had suspected he might consider a career in the police force, his enthusiasm for detective work was clear and I never doubted it was something that would continue to develop as he grew older. Thankfully he decided against such a mundane expression of his abilities and became a private agent instead.

One of the more predictable effects of Watson’s writings has been the burgeoning industry of independent detectives. They have always existed of course, merrily pandering to the public’s inane confusions with their limited skills. They were something I was quick to distance myself from, classing myself as a “consulting” detective, one that helped the official police force rather than just the braying public. Still, after my methods became so well known and my successes so widely discussed, the business of deduction became a boom industry. (I also believe the name “Sherlock” found a brief popularity amongst expectant mothers for which I can only apologise to the infants in question.) Private investigators sprung up all over the country ranging from large-scale operations with a sizeable staff to individual operators working out of their own parlours. It seemed that everyone had suddenly developed a skill for deduction and wanted nothing more than to share it. I had no doubt that the majority of such organisations were an exercise in wish-fulfilment and their owners would be out of business before the ink dried on their business cards.

If any private individual stood a chance at making a go of it though, it would be Wiggins, and I for one was pleased to see him try. I realised it might be appreciated were I to suggest as much to him. (I often forget these personal details when Watson is absent.)

“I was considerably impressed,” I told him, thinking the words through carefully, “and have no doubt that great things stand ahead of you.” I sat down in a vacant armchair. “That’s as long as you manage to survive the night of course.”