Warlock Holmes--The Sign of Nine

by G. S. Denning

  “We’ve overshot her!” Lestrade called.

  “No trouble,” I shouted back. I kept the boat turning in a wide arc, out towards the middle of the river, then briefly upstream, then back towards the southern bank again. It was just what we’d needed, as taking her round in a circle bled off all our excess speed. If the Aurora had still been seaworthy, it would have left us at a great disadvantage. Yet the concern was academic; Aurora wasn’t going anywhere. Indeed, Mordecai Smith now only had two options where to stop his boat: the Plumstead bank or the bottom of the river.

  He selected the former.

  As we looped Long Arm around to intercept at a safer pace, the Aurora brushed through the reeds and beached on the muddy shore. Both Smiths threw up their arms and shouted their intent to come along quietly and make no fuss. Not so their one remaining passenger. He waved his fist at us and cried, “You may have got Tonga, you ruddy bastards, but you’ll never get me!”

  Abandoning the huge iron treasure chest, he charged the full length of the Aurora and leapt from her bow. What a jump! He sailed over the nearest patch of reeds and landed heavily in the swampy mud just beyond.

  So heavily in fact that he drove his good leg deep into the soggy morass. His peg-leg fared even worse. He was up to his hip, tipped violently to his right. He gave a couple of experimental tugs to see if he could free himself.

  When that didn’t work, he began feeling about on the surface of the mud for any plants within reach that were well-enough rooted so he could pull himself free.

  When that didn’t work, he amended his earlier statement.

  “Actually… could you…? Could you come and get me?”

  11

  WE ALL KNEW WHERE WE’D EVENTUALLY END UP: Scotland Yard. Yet even the two of our number who worked there had no desire to show their faces until they could present a satisfactory explanation for the murder of Bartholomew Sholto and the fate of the Agra treasure.

  Oh, and somebody was likely to wonder where Hopkins had gone.

  We needed friendly ground and time to regroup. We needed 221B Baker Street.

  Lestrade hid Long Arm and—by extension—the slowly thickening mortal remains of Stanley Hopkins.

  Holmes conveyed Mordecai and James Smith back to their home and used magic to do something really horrible to their memories of the evening. Ask them about how their boat wound up stranded in the Plumstead Marshes with a hole blown through the bottom and you were likely to get a sweet tale of a flower girl with a heart of gold, or half-comprehensible mumbles about little gray men from the moon, but I shouldn’t hold out much expectation to hear any useful truths.

  Grogsson stomped halfway across town with the iron treasure box on one shoulder and our trussed-up, one-legged prisoner on the other.

  And I made tea.

  We set our prisoner on one of our overstuffed chairs and pulled his gag off. This had been a necessary precaution as the man had not come quietly. He’d been glad of our assistance in extricating him from the bog, but once that was accomplished he’d given us nothing but trouble. He’d twice tried to jump over the side of our boat—once actually making it into the water. As he was fully dressed, with his hands cuffed before him, his attempt to swim to shore had been somewhat… underwhelming. Certainly he would have drowned if we had not all heaved a collective sigh, pulled Long Arm around in a wide circle, drawn up beside him and watched him thrash for a few minutes, before asking, “So… how’s that working for you? Still pleased with our masterful escape plan, are we?”

  No sooner had we made landfall than he began screaming to anyone who would listen that we were not real police officers but kidnappers. That he was a loyal subject of the Crown who was being absconded with for dark, unchristian purposes.

  Hence the gag. And one may well believe we made sure he was trussed up pretty well before we removed it. No sooner had we pulled it away than he began howling that this was mistreatment, and that he had rights.

  “So did Bartholomew Sholto,” Lestrade said, kneeling down in front of him. “So did Inspector Hopkins.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that!” our prisoner insisted. “I’ve never met them in my life.”

  “Well, I for one believe him,” said Lestrade. “I propose we let him go.”

  “Really?” the prisoner asked eagerly.

  “No. Idiot. Now make things as easy on yourself as you can, eh? Why don’t we start with your name?”

  “I told you: it’s Queen Bloody Victoria!” he yelled. Which was a lie. The first time we’d asked he’d said Robin Hood.

  “Right, that’s it,” said Holmes, stepping forward and cracking his knuckles. “This is getting us nowhere. Time to use magic.”

  “Holmes, no!” I protested. “You don’t think you’ve done quite enough of that today? Remember sending ‘Toby’ home? Perhaps it’s time to give conventional methods a chance, don’t you think?”

  “But I’m tired, Watson. I want toast and soup and a lie-down. This is going to take forever. We can’t even get this fellow’s name.”

  “It’s Jonathan Small,” I said.

  “Eh? How do you know?” said Holmes and Lestrade and Grogsson and—with an unmistakable look of horror—Jonathan Small.

  “We know Major John Sholto was terrified of a one-legged white man, and that this fear was associated with the Agra treasure. We likewise know that the treasure was associated with the sign of nine—and that this sign was left with both Bartholomew and Major John Sholto following their deaths. Mary Morstan brought us one of her father’s old papers, a map labeled with ‘THE SIGN OF NINE’ and signed by four persons. Recall, however, that Agra is in India. Three of the signatories had traditional Indian names and are fairly likely to be dark-skinned. Only one of the names on that list sounds like it might be English—and that the owner of that name is most likely to be white. Therefore the balance of probability…” I indicated our prisoner. “Jonathan Small.”

  He gave me an angry sneer and growled, “You think you know so much, eh? Well we’ll see how far you get!”

  “Ha!” crowed Holmes. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with! John Watson has the best talent for deduction that I have ever encountered. He has just determined your name. In a minute more, he’ll have deduced how you are connected with the Agra treasure, how Morstan and Sholto came to know you, how you came to know a little demon finger-sniper, how Sholto got the treasure, the nature and location of the other three signatories to ‘the sign of nine’ map, and what ‘the sign of nine’ truly means! Ha!”

  I think I must have cleared my throat one time more than I should, or shuffled my feet a bit too conspicuously.

  “What’s the matter?” said Holmes, looking over at me.

  “Well, I mean… that’s a lot of questions, isn’t it? And we haven’t actually got all that many clues, so…”

  “So… five minutes, then?”

  “No, Holmes, I think it is likely to take—”

  “An hour?”

  “Significantly longer than that! Why, if the whole truth is ever known, I think it would only be with—”

  But I had lost my chance. Holmes locked eyes first with Grogsson, then Lestrade. The three of them all said, “Magic.”

  “Oh, come on!” I protested.

  “No. Magic,” said Holmes, reaching out his right palm towards Lestrade. “Everybody, join hands.”

  Lestrade took Holmes’s hand, then reached out for Grogsson’s. Grogsson reached out for mine, but I crossed my arms and declared, “I refuse! We must not be cavalier with the fate of the world! I will not—”

  “We might need Watson’s powers of deduction,” said Holmes. “Grogsson, get him.”

  “Don’t you d—Aaaaaieeeeee!” I howled as Grogsson grabbed me by the back of my jacket and hoisted me into the air. I’m sure I would have had more opinions to offer if I’d been given the chance. I wasn’t. Holmes gave a satisfied nod, licked his left index finger, and thrust it deep into Jonathan Small’s right ear. For j
ust an instant, Small looked as if he might like to protest as vociferously as me.

  But only for an instant.

  Suddenly, Baker Street was gone. There was a flash of nothing.

  Then we were standing on a village green. It was morning, or early afternoon. Directly in front of us was a picturesque bench-swing, hung from a sturdy oak. On the bench was a young lady in a Sunday dress, a mass of blond curls bouncing beneath her bonnet. She was smiling at the lad on the other side of the bench—a love-struck country fop if ever I saw one. He was fawning over her, saying, “Oh, Molly! Molly, Molly, oh! Say you’ll be mine! Oh, you’ll make me the happiest man alive. So happy, we could be! Happy, happy, happy, oh!”

  “Hey!” Grogsson yelled. “Where we?”

  The answer came from our prisoner who glanced around in utter amazement and gasped, “Pershore! We’re in Pershore! By God, that’s Molly! The love of my life!”

  “Ha!” said Holmes, pointing at the lad on the swing. “That’s you?”

  “Hmm. Doubtful,” I said. “That man does not resemble Mr. Small.”

  Even as I said it, a second young man jumped from behind the oak tree and threw a pistol into the first man’s lap. “An honorable duel!” he announced, then drew his own pistol and blasted swing-boy straight in the face.

  “Oh!” cried Holmes and Lestrade.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” opined Molly, staring with horror at all the bits of blood and skin that had come to rest on the forward portion of her bouncing curls.

  “Now, that looks like Mr. Small,” I noted, pointing at the triumphant murderer.

  “So what if it is?” our prisoner protested. “I was young! I was in love! He was my rival! Any man would have done the same!”

  “Pretty sure I wouldn’t. How about you, Torg?” said Holmes, removing his finger from Small’s ear and dropping Lestrade’s hand. As nobody disappeared or faded out of the memory and back to the real world, it seemed safe for Lestrade to reclaim his hand from Grogsson and for Grogsson to drop me into the nearest hedge.

  “No!” said Grogsson. “Fight with on-ur!”

  “I did!” Small protested.

  “Hmm… no,” said Holmes. “Murder, I should think.”

  “Sure. Easily. Murder,” Lestrade agreed.

  Grogsson nudged him with his elbow and urged, “Write dis down.”

  “Oh! Yes. Yes, of course,” said Lestrade, patting his pockets in search of his notebook and pencil. “I mean… I’m not sure another man’s dreamscape is admissible in court, but better safe than sorry.”

  Jonathan Small crossed his arms and complained, “Well have it your way, then. You coppers always do. I’ll admit there was some debate over whether the duel was fair. In the end, there was nothing for it but to take the Queen’s shillin’ and head out with the Third Buffs, what was bound for India.”

  “Fun!” said Holmes. “Let’s go there now.”

  There was a sickening sort of lurch and Pershore was gone. The air was suddenly hot and dry, dusty. The call of strange insects filled the air. Before us lay a cluster of tents around a flagpole. The Union flag hung limp, for there was no breeze at all. Behind us the ground sloped down to a huge river of brownish-yellow water.

  “So this is India?” I said. “Well it’s better than Afghanistan at any rate.”

  “Why bless me!” Jonathan Small cried. “We must be back in—” But he stopped suddenly and a look of horror crossed his face. “Wait! No! We don’t have to watch this part. We can go.”

  From behind us came the faint sound of somebody calling, in a thick Scottish brogue, “Private Small, ye daft! Get out of the water!”

  To answer it came a gruff laugh and an already familiar Worcestershire drawl. “Sergeant Holder, you great coward! Why don’t you get in? Afraid I’ll splash you?”

  The voices issued from a little bend in the river, well obscured by scrub. Our little party set off to see what we could see. Small didn’t want to go, but Grogsson grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him. As we went he gave a little cough and began to sheepishly explain, “Well, India’s rather hot, you see. So… er… well, one day I thought I’d take a little swim in the Ganges.”

  Yet any explanation that might have been forthcoming was rather overshadowed—or no: foreshadowed—by Sergeant Holder’s remonstration, “There’s crocodiles, ye great numpty! Don’t y’see ’em?”

  “Oh! Oh! Crocodiles!” replied the mocking voice of younger-Small. “Maybe I should just wet m’nappy and run back to m—”

  There was a sudden snapping noise, followed by a great deal of screaming.

  Even as we ran, the four of us were shaking our heads at the remarkable imbecility of our prisoner. He had the good grace to color from the hair on his head to the tips of his toes. We at last crested a little rise and looked down into a small shallow inlet that presented a rather predictable sight: young Jonathan Small thrashing in a widening pool of red water. At his side floated a crocodile with its snout pointed skywards, happily chewing on Small’s disembodied right leg. The time Young Small gained while it took the beast to eat his lower extremity might have been enough to make it to shore, if his progress was not rather hampered by the fact he was now hopping through Ganges mud. To worsen matters, a second crocodile was closing in with a look on his face that very much resembled the reptilian equivalent of “Well, would you look at this? Stupid and wounded! Must be my lucky day.”

  The only unexpected part of the tableau was Sergeant Holder. He was surprisingly slight, a wiry little fellow who looked like he might weigh no more than 130 pounds soaking wet. And he was soaking wet. He was waist-deep in the Ganges, unarmed, racing the crocodiles to his injured comrade.

  By God, I will never know what inspires bravery like that.

  The two men reached each other and the wounded Small threw his arms around Holder. Holder whipped round and began dragging Small back towards land, looking over his shoulder at every chance to see how they were doing.

  Not well.

  The crocodiles were very close by the time they reached the shore. But here is the thing: crocodiles can go on shore. They might be a bit slower than in the water, but not so slow as a 130-pound sergeant, dragging a 190-pound wounded man.

  “Well, we can probably go, eh?” present-day Jonathan Small suggested. “I mean, you lads know how I lost my leg, so…”

  But how could we turn away from such drama? As the two men struggled up the muddy bank, Holder glanced over his shoulder one final time, then back to Small with an expression of pain and remorse.

  “It’s no good!” he said. “They’re too close. I’m sorry, I have to leave you!”

  A look of grim resolve broke across Young Small’s face. He gave a heavy sigh, as if he knew what he must do, but dreaded the duty.

  He planted his remaining leg firmly in the mud, grabbed the smaller man by his belt and the front of his shirt, hoisted him up into the air over his head, and threw him, screaming, to the crocodiles. As the two massive reptiles fought over who got the larger half, Small turned and hopped up the bank, shouting that there had been a terrible accident.

  “Small,” said Holmes, with a shake of his head. “Poor form.”

  “Yes,” Lestrade agreed. “I think that is very nearly the exact definition of poor form.”

  “I was about to get eaten by a crocodile!” Small protested. “Any man would have done the same.”

  “I hope you are wrong,” I said. “I’m not sure you are, but I hope so.”

  Grogsson gave Lestrade the elbow again. “Dat’s two. Write it down.”

  “Oh, right you are,” said Lestrade, and began scratching away.

  “You know something, Holmes,” I whispered, as Small leaned in over Lestrade’s notebook to be sure he was being fairly treated, “I am astonished how forthcoming Mr. Small has become.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, beaming. “It’s a little trick I learned from a play. Catch a fellow off guard, use a bit of magic, show him scenes from his own life, an
d he just can’t help himself! He’ll narrate the entire thing, both the good and ill.”

  “You learned this from a play, you say?”

  “Yes, Charles Dickens showed me. Amazing fellow. Smart as… well… smart as the Dickens, actually. Before you came along, I had to use this trick rather a lot. Probably will after you’re gone, I suppose.”

  I frowned. “Stop saying that, Holmes. I am not going anywhere.”

  “No. You are,” said Holmes, with an air of great sadness. “Really, Watson, I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’m afraid you must. You’ve got yourself so worked up over Irene Adler, and so poisoned with Persian mummy that there is simply no chance you’ll survive if you remain. Why, you’re so doomed you’ve killed Hopkins three times and there’s still no appreciable drop in your doom level. I will be very sad to see you go, but imagine how sad I’d be if I got you killed! No, no. It must be avoided.”

  “Ah, but you forget, Holmes: I do not have to leave 221B Baker Street unless I want to. And I do not want to. I am staying.”

  “No. You aren’t. I’ve got it all worked out. But come on, Watson! Don’t make us sad! Try to enjoy our last adventure together, eh? Let’s get back to our play. For your viewing enjoyment, Dr. Watson, Warlock Holmes proudly presents: A Christmas Carol!”

  As he said it, the scene wavered and shifted again.

  Now we stood in a broad tent, with the sun beating down on the canvas. Around us lay nine or ten men. Soldiers. Sick ones. Foreign deployments and bad habits always take their toll; the place stank of typhoid and malaria. On a cot before us lay the young Jonathan Small, with a bitter expression on his face, staring up at an officer.

  “Look, I told you before, Major. I did all I could, but it were no good! I couldn’t save him!”

  “I know what you told me, Small. But a few of the village boys tell a somewhat different story.”

  “You know these Mohammedans, sir. You know what passes for truth with their like, eh?”

  “Yes,” said the major, slowly. “Unfortunately for you, Small, I know them perfectly well. And I think I do understand their value of truth.”