Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (9 page)

Chapter XI

Into the Darkness

They journeyed back to London by hired steamer, put at their disposal by Sir Reginald Dunning, whom Holmes contacted by emergency telegram from the Richmond Station.  The great River Thames was layered with predawn blackness and the launch’s running lights were the only lights in motion all along the Syon, Mortlake and other reaches of the Thames, all other vessels either moored till the dawning or waiting for the turning of the tide.  They were unlikely to encounter any significant river traffic till Battersea or Nine Elms, a situation of which Peter Yanoz, owner of the launch, took full advantage, driving the engines at full pressure.

They passed the Old Deer Park and Kew Gardens on the right, lost in the shrouded night.  Kent lay on deck, letting the cool breeze flow over him, regretting his need to intake so much whiskey.  Holmes sat next to Maddoc on a bench by the side.

“Some stragglers remained in the woods there,” Maddoc said, “but the largest group moved on to London.”

“How many do you estimate?” Holmes asked.

“Fifty at the most, probably less at the moment, but their numbers are not as important as their constitution,” Maddoc answered.

“Which is?”

“You must understand that although the Morlocks evolved from modern man they are not like us in many ways,” Maddoc explained.

“The devil…” Kent muttered, but Holmes gently motioned him to silence.

“They are hive creatures, the ideal adaptation to  subterranean communal life,” Maddoc continued.  “Every biological and psychological change wrought in them is in answer to and in support of that environment.  Their hives in the future centre about an analogy to a queen bee or queen ant, an entity which I call the Mother-Thing, by dint of its relationship to the ordinary Morlocks of the hive.  A colony cannot exist without a Mother-Thing; kill it and the hive withers.”

“Hence your zeal to find the centre of the Morlock infestation in London.”

“By 1954, Mr Holmes, there were three colonies in England and many more throughout the world,” Maddoc said.  “But they all stemmed from the one colony in the London of 1894.”

“Destroy this colony, and the others will never be.”

“Precisely,” Maddoc agreed.

After they passed the distinctively fashioned bridge at Hammersmith and hove closer to the heart of the great city, the captain of the launch was forced to reduce speed.  Holmes roused Kent, who had mostly recovered from his bout with disbelief, faith and whiskey.

“Maddoc and I will disembark up ahead, but I want you to continue on to New Scotland Yard, landing at the River Police Dock,” Holmes told him.  “The time is past when we can fight this by ourselves.”

“What if they refuse to believe me?”

“You must make them believe, if not in the truth then in the danger.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Call upon resources of my own,” Holmes replied.  “Remember, there are not only the Morlocks to defeat, but William Dunning and the other poor souls to rescue from the darkness, if possible.”

Holmes and Maddoc were put ashore at an ancient jetty.

“As soon as you arrange for support meet us outside Charing Cross Station with three dark lanterns,” Holmes instructed.  “No more than an hour from now, Inspector, else we will have to go on without you.”

“Like bloody hell, you will!” grinned Kent as the launch swung away from the jetty and steamed down the Thames.

Holmes, accompanied by Maddoc, engaged a hansom cab from Tilling’s fleet.  They made their way to the London Office of the Pinkertons, considered the finest private detective agency in the world, second in efficiency as an organisation only to Scotland Yard itself.  Over the years, Holmes had called upon the Pinkertons to act as enquiry agents in some of his investigations when extra eyes were warranted.

When Holmes rejoined Maddoc in the waiting hansom, he handed the inventor a revolver and a box of ammunition.  Holmes was himself armed with a similar firearm as well as a loaded hunting crop in the inside pocket of his coat. 

“Charing Cross Station,” Holmes told the driver.  “And hurry!”

“Do we stand a chance, Mr Holmes?” Maddoc asked.  “Can we hope to avert of nightmare future of the Morlocks?”

“It does not matter,” Holmes answered.  “Even if we knew of a surety the hopelessness of our quest, that the future was preordained to the abyss, we could do nothing else but strive toward our goal.  To do otherwise, even to escape death, would make us traitors of humanity.  Besides, the fact that you changed the future to the worse at least presents the possibility of us changing the future to the better.”

Holmes settled back into the cramped confines of the hansom and rested his sharp chin upon his interlaced fingers, his eyes half-closed.  A sudden jolt of the vehicle in one of London’s numerous potholes brought him out of his reverie and he realised the cab was racing down Baker Street, that he was almost even with his own lodgings.  Glancing upward, he saw the window broken by Colonel Moran in his murderous attempt on the evening of his return, which now seemed almost a lifetime ago.  The morning breeze fluttered the curtains.  A dim light burned within though he recalled turning down the gas before leaving.  A form appeared in the window, too tall to be Mrs Hudson, too lean to be Watson, and he saw the ruddy glow of a pipe.

Holmes frowned as the cab continued on through the darkness.

They found Kent waiting impatiently outside Charing Cross Station.  He clambered inside the hansom after the driver levered open the knee-doors, a tight fit in a conveyance designed for two, but still workable.

“It took some doing, but we’ll not be alone in the darkness,” Kent reported as they shot toward the East End.  “They wanted to lock me up as a lunatic, but both Gregson and Lestrade threw in, at the peril of their careers,  at the mention of your involvement.  You may not realise it, Mr Holmes, but there are few at the Yard who do not have the utmost respect for you, and I am proud to now count myself as one of their number.”

“Thank you, Inspector Kent,” Holmes replied.  “How many men?”

“Several dozen, entering the sewers through every man-sized opening within a half-mile of the Spitalfields Market,”  Kent reported.  “All will be heavily armed.  None will know exactly what they are hunting beyond the fact that the sewer has become infested by a dangerous sort of beast.”

“There is no need for them to know anything else,” Holmes agreed.  “What they will encounter will give them nightmares enough as is.  With the Pinkertons helping, especially if there is close-quarter fighting – the Americans are really much better at that sort of thing – we should be more than a match for any Morlock bands, and there might even be  a chance of rescuing any hostages not yet consumed.”

Kent shuddered.  “Do you hold forth any hope for young Dunning?”

“Only the faintest, I fear,” Holmes admitted.

They drove at a breakneck pace along the Thames, not turning from the river till they had sighted the gaunt form of Tower Bridge under construction.  The twin towers were partially connected at the upper portion, but the gothic façades, which would house the machinery to raise and lower the bascules, had not been applied.  They rose from the misty river like sentinels, obscure in the predawn darkness, dimly illumed solely by the vague navigation lights of river traffic moored and just stirring to motion.

Just south of their goal, Holmes called for the cabby to halt, and the three men poured out of the constricted confines of the hansom.

Deep in the heart of Stepney Borough, on Bishopsgate up from Houndsditch, they passed out of Whitechapel Parish into  Spitalfields to the north, centre to London’s silk-weavers since the immigration of the Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, home to the infamous astrologer Nicolas Culpepper, whose lair in Red Lion Square was the scene to many strange goings on during the reign of  ill-fated Charles I. Away in the distance they saw the elaborate steeple of the parish church soaring more than two hundred feet  and knew they were not far from the great market, which had been established three hundred years earlier, where one could purchase any manner of cloth or produce, where came the bird fanciers of London to seek caged creatures with plumage beautiful and songs exquisite.

They walked through Petticoat Lane, down Widegate Street, across Sandy’s Run and finally into Frying Pan Alley, a dreary passage lined with dismal-fronted tenements, soot-grimed and nitre-encrusted, with cracked or boarded-over windows, and doorways so narrow one would have to turn sideways to enter into one of the tiny body-infested rooms beyond.  Except for the three of them the alleyway was uninhabited, but in one of the narrow doorways, huddled in shadow and watching them with the smouldering sullen glare of the poor, crouched a woman, probably in her teens but appearing in her forties, a wretched suckling clutched to her naked breast; and they felt the hostile gazes of others through those black windows.

“God,” Kent breathed, and no one could tell whether it was prayer or curse.

“Looking at her and knowing the unsanitary crowded conditions within, Inspector Kent, do you find it so difficult to believe in the Morlocks?”  Maddoc asked.  “Are these people of the East End not already well on their way to becoming Morlocks?”

“They’re human, damn you!”  Kent growled.  “They may be society’s dregs, but they still have within them, no matter how dimmed by drink and debauchery, the divine spark.”

“But, Inspector, they have already adapted…”

“Gentlemen,” Holmes interrupted.  “You may debate biology or theology, as you choose, but please reserve it to a later date, providing we survive.”

Chapter XII

The Thing Beneath London

“The entrance is over this way,” Maddoc said.  “It is not one of the avenues used by the Morlocks when they emerge from the darkness into night, but it is the closest opening to the heart of their operations.”

They approached a culvert that ran between two close buildings and vanished beyond a rusted grate.  The flagged channel was layered with mould and refuse, coated with filth not completely washed into the chambers beneath, and stagnant puddles shimmered.  Ignoring the stink rising from below, Kent and Maddoc levered the grate out of place and quietly set it aside.

Sherlock Holmes looked to the greying sky.  “I would rather enter in darkness, but we can afford no further delays, for the sakes of whatever prisoners may yet remain alive.”

“Why, Holmes?” Kent asked.

“The Morlocks are nocturnal,” Maddoc answered.  “Their eyes have become very sensitive to light from dwelling long centuries in their caverns. Light will be a weapon against them.”

“Ah,” breathed Kent, “the dark lanterns.”

“But with the dawning, they will be returning to their lairs,”  Maddoc continued.  “If we could have got here before dawn or…”  He voice trailed away.  “If only I had not been persuaded to destroy the Time Machine, I could…”

“I would have thought, Mr Maddoc, that you, of all people,” Holmes said coldly, “would have learned the dangers of, shall we say, fiddling with time.”

Maddoc lowered his gaze, but made no reply.

“All right then,” Kent said, pulling his revolver and approaching the opening.  “Lord, what a smell.”

The three men entered the eternal night of London’s underworld just as vague dawn was creeping over the great city.  They had not penetrated deeply when they were forced to light the dark lanterns, but they adjusted the shutters of the devices so only the barest of gleams escaped, though they would be able to open wide the shutters in an instant.  With the thin shafts of light that filtered down through street openings they had sufficient light to their needs.

The air within the sewer was foetid in the extreme, freighted with smells of human and animal waste.  The walls were mostly of brick, probably dating back to the Poor Law Commission of 1843, nearly two hundred years after the Commissioners of Sewers settled the drainage problems of the gentry in the City, but some sections were faced with nothing more than hard-packed impermeable clay; everywhere, though, all the walls were encrusted with pale nitrates and tiny stalactites were suspended above them.  The clotted water that sloshed around their boots shone prismatic in the dim light, infused as it was  with pungent naphthalene and other chemicals  that ran off from above.

“How could any creature endure this?” Kent demanded, keeping his voice low.

“Adaptation through necessity,” Maddoc murmured.  Then, even more softly: “Evolution.”

“Forces from the Yard should be entering about now,” Kent remarked, ignoring the inventor’s musings.

“The Pinkertons, too,” Holmes added.

The veracity of their words were confirmed by sudden sounds echoing through the miles of sewers, shouts and gunshots.

“Which way, Maddoc?” Holmes demanded urgently.  “We must take advantage of the diversion caused by the others.”

“This way,” Maddoc replied, moving to the fore.

Screams and shouts echoed out of the blackness, but there was no way of telling how close or how far away they were.  With Maddoc in the lead, they made their way as quickly as possible.  They were dogged by unseen splashes and stealthy treads all around them, and they often caught in the narrow beams of their lanterns flashes of white which vanished almost as soon as the light fell upon them.

As they penetrated  deeper, the smells of the sewer, which were at least the odours of a human city, were overpowered by other smells, feral and noxious scents, the smells of matted fur and a strange musk, of waste made by an animal not of this world.

They passed through a ragged opening tore through a brick facing and entered a region of new excavations.  At the same time, the sounds of conflict dropped away to be replaced by deep mechanical throbbings.  Strange machines rose about them, powered by energies unfathomable to these men dwelling toward the close of the Nineteenth Century.

They were attacked almost immediately, white-pelted creatures surging at them and dropping from above.  They opened wide the shutters of their reflecting lanterns.

The creatures revealed in the sudden glare fell back from the light, holding their hairy arms and wide-spread taloned hands up to shield eyes large as saucers and as reflective as those of cats or lemurs.  They wore no clothing, but the fur that covered their thick bodies seemed to accentuate their nakedness rather than conceal it.  Their noses were not much more than slits, and their red-rimmed mouths gaped to reveal jagged yellowed fangs, denoting a diet composed entirely of meat, and even Holmes shuddered at the thought of what unwholesome nourishment these creatures might find savoury in the heart of London.

The men hesitated the barest of moments before firing their weapons, sending volley after volley into the Morlocks.  The bestial descendants of men fell before the attack, and they gave way into the heart of their underground empire.

The penetration was a setback but not a defeat for the Morlocks, and they attacked the invaders with even more ferocity.  Kent fell as a Morlock smashed into him, but as the beast bent to tear out the inspector’s throat Maddoc put a bullet through its brain.  Kent’s lantern flew against a machine, broke open and spread flaming coal-oil across a line of attackers.  Holmes’ lantern, too, was dashed away by a clawed hand, but it merely went out, leaving them with just Maddoc’s lantern, which could only illume one direction of attack at a time.

Kent clambered to his feet, firing with Holmes and Maddoc at the flashes of white which kept at them.

“Does not look good, Mr Holmes!” Kent snarled, firing a last shot, then reloading as quickly as possible.

“I cannot find fault in your logic,” Holmes replied, aiming, then firing.

Pitiful cries for help and moans of terror and pain sounded from the darkness in the direction they had been making – human cries, human moans.

“Prisoners!” Kent yelled.

“We’re too late to help them, or ourselves!” cried Maddoc.  He fired his weapon, but the hammer clicked on empty chambers.

“Listen!” Holmes said, as he shot a charging Morlock full in the face.

Maddoc and Kent then knew what Holmes, with his sensitive hearing, had known for several moments – the tide was about to turn.  Dozens of shafts of light abruptly shot through the machinery-filled cavern, and the foetid air suddenly echoed with gunshots and the bellowing voices of grimly determined men.

The Morlock defence crumbled under the wave of Scotland Yard officers and Pinkerton operatives, who drove before them the remnants of the creatures they had encountered in the outer tunnels, ruthlessly killing them before they could flee.  In the lead were both Lestrade and Gregson.

“Good to see you’ve wasted no time in keeping busy and causing trouble, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade said. “I shall surely give your best to Colonel Moran when I see him.” 

They found about three dozen prisoners, most of them alive, but a few so close to death they would likely not survive to see the surface world again.  All around them were the grisly remains of Morlock repasts, so gruesome that even some of the operatives and police agents fainted dead away, even after the terrors they had already endured to attain this point.

Among the prisoners was William Dunning, whom Holmes recognised from the likeness given him by Sir Reginald.  The young man was gaunt in the extreme, terribly weak and glaze-eyed.  It would be some time before Dunning recovered from the horrors of captivity and cannibalism, but given enough time and care, he would regain his senses.

“The Mother-Thing is not here or among the dead,” Maddoc told Holmes.

Lestrade and some of the police broke open the newly constructed cells while Gregson and the Pinkertons hunted down the remaining Morlocks.

Maddoc, Holmes and Kent deserted the others for a narrow opening pointed out by Maddoc.  They pressed through a smooth-walled tunnel and found themselves in yet another artificial chamber.

“Great God in heaven!” Kent breathed.

“Good lord,” Holmes murmured, and he fired a shot.

The target of Holmes’ shot shimmered as the bullet  passed through it. The creature in the midst of the machine was naked except for a tool and weapon belt; it was a swollen mockery of motherhood, with pendulous breasts like a sow and limbs so heavily muscled as to shame a stevedore.   It glared at the three men with all the hatred of a mother who has witnessed the murder of her brood, and with all the cunning of a she-wolf seeking another lair.

A whirlwind swept the chamber, and machine and monster vanished.

“The Mother-Thing has escaped!” yelled Maddoc.  “She has escaped into time.  We dare not lose another moment!”