Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine

by G. S. Denning

  The footprints were peculiar in the extreme. One set seemed to be that of a man; the tread of an average shoe or boot (my lack of skill did not permit me to determine which) on the left side was alternated with a queer, round impression on the right. I deemed that he must have lost that right leg at some point and been fitted with a peg.

  Yet his tracks were not as unique as the ones beside them.

  “Is that… a bear?” Holmes wondered.

  “If so, a very small one, I should think.”

  The tracks had a narrow heel, and a wide, splayed foot with distinct scratch marks both in front of each toe and behind the heel. They were about the size of a child’s foot but definitely not the shape that might be left by any child I’d ever met. Come to think of it, not any bear, either.

  “Holmes… I’m no naturalist, but… is there such a thing as a bear with a claw behind its heel?”

  “I don’t know… Ah! The South-German back-clawed black bear! Yes, Ursus germanicus back-scratchicus—”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Well, probably.”

  The claw-footed little fellow seemed to have spent quite some time near the hatch in the roof, working an old rope and pulley attached to one of the beams. He’d also gone near the treasure, where he and peg-leg had left distinct drag marks, pulling it from the center of the room to the pulley. Most tellingly, there was a set of footprints from the hatch to the hole down into the chemical workshop. Looking down through the hole, one had a clear view of Bartholomew’s desk.

  “I’m no expert, Holmes, but as I read it the little bearlike fellow got in through that hatch, came over here, shot Bartholomew as he sat at his desk, then went back to the hatch, let in his one-legged compatriot, the two of them used the rope and tackle to lower the Agra treasure down the side of the house and escaped the way they’d come in.”

  “Er… why is there a rope and tackle here, Watson?”

  I shrugged. “The mechanism is certainly old. I doubt the thief climbed up here and installed it. Probably that’s how Major Sholto got the treasure up here in the first place. Egad! There’s no hatch to the room below! Just imagine: whenever John Sholto needed funds, he must have had to scale the outside of his own house and sneak treasure out!”

  “The old fellow didn’t look very spry, even in that picture,” Holmes laughed. “I imagine he didn’t do it very often.”

  “No. No, probably he deposited a fair amount in a bank or made some other investment before he secreted the main body of the treasure up here.”

  Our investigation was cut short by the breathless arrival of Mrs. Bernstone, Mary Morstan and Thaddeus Sholto. It seems the old housekeeper had responded to our initial summons of some fifteen minutes earlier, but her arrival had been much delayed by Thaddeus’s insistence that he come too. Mrs. Bernstone had therefore enlisted the help of Miss Morstan to drag her former master and his hookah up four flights of stairs.

  “You needed me?” she called breathlessly, from the room below.

  “Oh… not anymore, Mrs. Bernstone,” I shouted back. “We wanted to ask if you had a key to this room, but we made our own way in.”

  “Bastards! I’ll kill yeh!”

  “We’re very sorry, Mrs. Bernstone.”

  Any further threats to life and limb that might have been delivered by the sweating septuagenarian were cut short by a horrible cry from Thaddeus.

  “No-no-no-mew-hew-no-mew! Brother Bartholomew! What has happened?”

  Holmes gave me a pained look and climbed back down one of the stepladders. “I am so sorry, my new friend, but it seems somebody has broken in here, murdered your brother, and stolen the Agra treasure.”

  “Nooooooooooo! Rhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”

  This latter, of course, was from Mary Morstan who was not well pleased to hear she’d just spent the entire evening traipsing all over London with a gang of utter weirdos, only to have the treasure she’d been promised pulled out from beneath her very nose. For an instant I feared she was going to snatch up Thaddeus Sholto and throw him across the room.

  As for Thaddeus, all the bravery he had mustered to please Mary disappeared in an instant. The death of his brother had him perfectly overwrought. And why not? With his father and mother gone too, he was the sole surviving member of his family. Indeed, there was every likelihood he was the only surviving member of his species and now quite alone in the world. He wailed over his brother, fretted that the murderer might come back for him as well, and opined that—given his well-known feud with the late Bartholomew—he might be suspected of his brother’s death.

  Bernstone and McMurdo had no shortage of theories as to what had happened and it was dashed difficult to keep them from completely ruining the crime scene. Therefore, I insisted the discussion be moved downstairs—drawing a hard look from Mrs. Bernstone. After some moments’ herding and cajoling, our assembly was at last returned to the ground floor. There, I left Holmes alone with the rabble for a few minutes, hoping to scout the grounds for signs of where the thieves had accessed the roof.

  “Well?” asked Holmes when I returned some minutes later. “Any luck, Watson?”

  “Right below the hoist there’s a rather large dent in the flowerbed. It seems they dropped the precious Agra treasure at least part of the way. I found tracks from both peg-leg and little-bear. I think they went across the grounds in a north-east direction, but I’m not very good at this sort of thing. I’ve no idea where they’ve gone or how much of a start they’ve got on us. I don’t think there’s much I can do to find them.”

  “Ha! I’m sure I might be of service,” said Holmes, with a mischievous smile.

  “Holmes! No magic!”

  “Try to extend me some credit, won’t you?” he grumbled. “That is not what I was going to propose.”

  “Oh?”

  “I happen to know a more Watson-friendly expedient. Have you ever heard of Sherman’s Menagerie?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Well it’s a very impressive place and old Sherman owes me a favor or two. You go there and tell him Warlock Holmes needs somebody tracked. He’ll set you up.”

  “Capital! Now we just need to find a way to extricate ourselves from—”

  “Already done,” said Holmes, merrily. “Thaddeus wants to report the murder and burglary to the police.”

  “Wise, I should think.”

  “And Mary wants everybody arrested.”

  “Predictable.”

  “And I thought perhaps we should divide our forces. McMurdo will take you and Miss Morstan in Bartholomew’s carriage. Drop Mary off at home, go see Sherman and hurry back here.”

  “What will you do, Holmes?”

  “I shall go with Thaddeus to the police. I know most of them, so I’ll do my best to make sure someone competent and sympathetic handles the case. Then I’ll escort them back here and show them what you’ve discovered. As soon as you bring the tracker, we’ll see if we can’t beat Scotland Yard to our man. Sound good?”

  It sounded uncharacteristically good. I stared at Holmes with growing suspicion. He’d been surprisingly competent today. Why? Knowing him as I did, I realized that what others often mistook for stupidity on Holmes’s part was frequently simple distraction. Old men’s minds will wander, after all, and Holmes was in excess of two hundred and fifty years of age. In truth, his depth of knowledge was colossal and he had managed on his own for longer than I could wrap my mind around. But still… why this sudden burst of competence? Did he have some reason to care greatly about the Sholtos? About Mary Morstan?

  And then, I realized: it was probably me. He was making up for me. I was nearly at the limit of my strength and my mind was perhaps not as sharp as it might be, given the state I’d been in when the affair began. Was Holmes putting forth unusual focus and extra effort because I couldn’t? As I stared up at him, trying to fathom his motivations, he said, “Oh, and by the way: have fun dropping Mary off! Row-rowl!”

  “What do you me
an, ‘row-rowl’?”

  “Rowr!”

  “Don’t do that with your eyebrows, Holmes.”

  “Ha-rowr!”

  “All right. I’m leaving.”

  6

  THE JOURNEY BACK TO MARY MORSTAN’S EMPLOYERS’ home in Lower Camberwell was not the romantic retreat Holmes seemed to hope it would be. For the better part of the ride I slept on the seat across from Mary, while she fumed. She left me in no doubt that this made me a very poor escort and nothing like a gentleman, either.

  I didn’t care.

  Despite the fact that we arrived in the pre-dawn hours, both Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Forrester met us at the door.

  “Oh look, Cecil,” said Mrs. Forrester through a clenched smile, “this fine gentleman is returning Mary to us. I do hope everything is all right.”

  “Yes,” her husband agreed, through a similarly strained grin. “We had rather… um… feared that some twist of fortune might preclude the possibility that young Mary might ever return to us! Ha! Ha-ha!”

  Poor fellow. I decided to show the light of hope to the Forresters.

  “Indeed, your fears were not far off,” I said. “It seems that Mary is heir to a fortune large enough that it would be absolutely preposterous for her to continue in her capacity as governess.”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Forrester, tears of hope forming in her eyes.

  “Unfortunately, we arrived to claim it just a few hours after the treasure in question was stolen.”

  “Noooooooo!”

  “Yet hope remains. Scotland Yard and the great consulting detective, Warlock Holmes, are on the case. If fortune is with us, I may be bringing news to you soon.”

  “Oh God! Is there anything we can do to help? Anything? Anything!”

  “At this moment, nothing, but allow me to return to my duties. Farewell, Mr. and Mrs. Forrester and… good luck to us all.”

  * * *

  I slept again as McMurdo drove us to the address Holmes had given: 3 Pinchin Lane, a taxidermist’s down near the river at Lambeth. Just as Holmes had promised, over the third establishment on the right was a sign that read SHERMAN’S MENAGERIE. In the window was a stuffed weasel, holding a stuffed rabbit. It was unclear whether the two were meant to be fighting or… courting. Whatever the nature of their discourse, old Mr. Sherman seemed to have framed it as a moment of profound ferocity. Teeth were bared, claws were brandished and he had replaced both animals’ eyes with red glass marbles that practically glowed as the dawn’s light fell across them.

  I gave a knock. Then another. Then a rather loud third. I knew it was impolite at this early hour, but Holmes had insisted it was necessary. Finally a bleary-looking, white-haired gentleman slid open an upper window and shouted, “Bugger off! I told yeh, I don’t do ’umans! Wait a moment… Who’re you?”

  “Not who you expected, clearly. I am a friend of Warlock Holmes. We need to track a murderer and he said you are the man to see.”

  “Warlock ’olmes, eh?” Sherman said and gave a grunt of… I don’t know… grudging respect? “Best come in.”

  I waited as an alarming number of bolts and chains were slid free on the other side of the battered wooden door. Finally, it cracked open a pinch, emitting that special musk that only two hundred dead animals and half a hundred live ones are capable of producing. As he beckoned me inside, Sherman said, “Mind you don’t let the timber wolf out. ’E’s a bugger to chase down in the morning.”

  “Timber wolf?” I wondered, but my conviction that this must surely be the strangest member of Sherman’s Menagerie did not survive more than five feet inside the door. The walls were lined with cages of unfortunate animals and the shelves with displays of even less-fortunate ones. Or so I thought. I was just regarding a strange composition of a badger about to eat a stuffed mouse, when Sherman mentioned, over his shoulder, “Mind that badger; she bites.”

  “But isn’t she—”

  In an instant, the badger dropped the stuffed mouse and made a sudden grab for my moustache. I cried out and lunged back, nearly tipping a puma’s cage over, which may have made matters a great deal worse.

  “People don’t give ’em much credit,” Sherman grumbled, “but badgers is one o’ nature’s most clever ambush-predators.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Now leave the nice gentleman alone, Mrs. Scruffers, or I’ll have to kill yeh and stuff yeh for real. And who wants that, eh? Now then… where’d I put that demon…?”

  “What? Demon? No, no, no! I am here for a tracking dog!”

  “Then you’ll be wanting Old Toby,” said Sherman, jerking one thumb at a stuffed dog on the shelf above his shop counter, “but you’re about seven months late. Broke me ’eart when Toby went, it did. But never you mind. Mr. Warlock ’olmes left a demon in my care and said he might require the bugger’s services someday. Well, today’s the day, that’s what I say! Ah! ’Ere we are!”

  Mr. Sherman produced a large wooden crate that shook and rattled as he placed it on the counter. He carefully slid back two latches on the side, reached in with an iron poker and fished around until he had retrieved one end of a tattered leather lead.

  “’Ere you go,” he said, holding it out to me. “That’s ’is leash. Don’t let go of it. Ever. For any reason. He’ll mind you so long as you’re holding it, but drop it an’ God ’elp us all.”

  With deep trepidation, I peeped around the side and into the dark confines of the crate. The thing that peered out at me was completely alien. It had four legs, though the term “spiny little spike-stabbers” might be a more apt description. It also had four eyes, although not in the usual place. They were luminous yellow blobs slung just beneath its jaw. The jaw itself was composed of a number of finger-like “teeth” that opened out to either side. The entire creature was covered in chitinous armor plates—black, but with all the colors of the rainbow shining in subtle iridescence, like a beetle. I’d have said it was an exoskeleton, were it not for the ropy strands of tangled purplish musculature that protruded from inside the creature and attached to various plates. So… a hybrid endo-exoskeleton, semi-insectoid physiology and… well look: the important thing was he was staring up at me with a brand of playful curiosity that made it plain he was wondering what I tasted like.

  “We calls ’im Bix,” Sherman told me.

  “Bix? What kind of a name is that?”

  Sherman shrugged. “Most of the other one-syllable sounds was taken. As I said, he’ll mind you when you’ve got the leash in hand. And it’s safe to tie ’im up, long as it’s real secure, like; he won’t go nowhere. But just don’t let anything get near ’im unless you want it eaten. Now good day to yeh.”

  “What? No! You can’t expect me to just go wandering the streets of London with a monster on a leash.”

  “Better’n off-leash.”

  “That is not my point, sir, and I believe you know it! Think of how it will look!”

  “I don’t care!” Sherman thundered. “Warlock ’olmes drops this bugger off and then I don’t see hide nor hair of him for years! Never a ‘how’s that insect/demon/dog doing, eh?’ Now Bix’s got his uses, I’ll warrant that. Better nose than even Old Toby had. Pretty good for scarin’ away beggar kids, too. But enough is enough! Out!”

  “But I can’t very well—”

  “Out!”

  Desperately, my eyes flew all about the shop, searching for something—anything—I might use to disguise the hideous Bix. It had to be roughly his size, and something that wouldn’t seem out of place on a leash. Really, there was only one choice.

  “Toby! I want to buy Toby!”

  “Eh?”

  “You’re a taxidermist, aren’t you? Sell me that stuffed dog!”

  “That’s me best friend! He ain’t for sale!”

  “It’s just a dead dog!”

  “Oi! Toby were family! I’m a lonely man! Look about! See many kids runnin’ around, do yeh?”

  “Twenty pounds!”

  “What?”

&nb
sp; “I’ll give you twenty pounds for that stuffed dog.”

  “Fifty!”

  “How dare you!”

  “Toby’s family and the price is fifty!”

  “That is robbery, sir!”

  “Fifty pounds, or get out!”

  “But I… Argh! Very well! But you have to throw in some string and lend me a pair of scissors!” I said, beginning a subtle exploration of my left ear. In our early adventures, Holmes had somehow magicked a significant quantity of cash into my aural canal. He’d warned me there was a finite amount in there, and only to use it in cases of emergency—which this certainly was—but I hated having to dig around in my ear for funds almost as much as I hated the circumstance that had necessitated it.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I emerged from the alley behind Sherman’s Menagerie, leading New Toby. Original Toby was now naught but a sad little pile of sawdust stuffing and sticks beside Mr. Sherman’s suspicious boxes of… whatever it is taxidermists keep in dark alleys. Still, Original Toby had served his purpose. I had what I needed: the poor old mutt’s hide, which—through the liberal application of twine—had been stretched over Bix’s armor plates.

  “All right, listen here,” I hissed at him, as we stepped out into the street, “until further notice, your name is Toby. You are a perfectly average dog and I expect you to act like it. Is that clear?”

  “SKRAX!” Bix shouted.

  “Well that’s not a normal doggie noise, now is it? Not helpful, ‘Toby’! I don’t suppose there’s another sound you could—”

  “STRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB-RAAAABBAAAABLE! XXRAAAAAAH!”

  “Brilliant. Thank you.”

  What could I do but adopt the pose of the well-to-do dog owner. I pushed my hat back, thrust my nose to the stratosphere and held my leash arm straight ahead of me at shoulder level. Look at the gentleman said my supercilious posture; feel no need to examine his pet. If I had any illusions as to how well my guise was working, I kept them only until McMurdo saw me approaching the carriage.

  “Awwwww! What the hell?”

  “What are you complaining about?” I sniffed. “I’m the one who has to sit with him. Now please, just get us back to Pondicherry Lodge, won’t you?”