The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Martian Menace
Page 27
We learned later that the effects of the pulse generator had reached as far as Staines in the west and the Isle of Sheppey to the east, as far north as Brentford and south to Guildford. In other cities up and down the land, Resistance members had fought the Martians, bringing down tripods and Martian air-cars with rockets and mortars, though these brave souls had suffered many casualties, and the Martians had taken much longer to defeat. Indeed, in Glasgow the fight was still going on one week later, with scattered cells of fighters scurrying like rats in the ruins of their city and striking the Martians with well-planned hit-and-run attacks.
Across the world, bands of rebels attacked the Martians in cities as far-flung as Delhi and Tokyo, Cairo and Buenos Aires – with the aid of the pulse generators and without. Great gains were made in the days that followed, with a hundred thousand Martians slaughtered and just as many taken prisoner. Not that the rout was universal, however. We learned from special editions of The Times, put out by presses no longer under the censorship of the Martians, that the aliens had fought back successfully in Toronto and Rabat, though military assistance was being rushed in to these benighted cities from New York and Tunis respectively.
At three o’clock, with the city still and smoking before us, Holmes suggested that we make our way back to Barnes.
A strange atmosphere prevailed all across London: few citizens were venturing out, and still fewer cars – and no cabs – were abroad. From time to time we came across people who had come to stare at the scene of devastation, the burned-out buildings and the broken mains where tripods had fought back, the shattered pipes sending geysers fifty feet into the air. Here and there we happened upon knots of first-aiders giving succour to the hurt and lame, and I stopped and gave assistance where I could. Everywhere we came upon toppled tripods like swatted insects with their iron limbs sprawling. In every instance the Martian pilots within the cowls had died on impact or been summarily put to death by Resistance fighters, and their noisome cadavers hung from the wreckage of their machines or lay in the streets, their flesh picked at by scavenging crows and magpies.
On Chelsea embankment we happened upon the first simulacrum casualty we had seen that day. On the pathway of a Georgian townhouse I saw the prostrate figure of a well-dressed gentlemen, his entire body twitching in what I thought at the time to be some kind of fit. Holmes and I rushed to his side. He lay on this back, staring into the sky with open eyes, the muscles of his face pulled by a hundred ghastly spasms and his limbs jumping inhumanly. He was evidently still alive and yet, when I felt for his pulse, I found none.
Holmes laid a hand on my arm and murmured what I had belatedly come to realise, “A simulacrum, Watson.”
He reached into the fellow’s frock coat and, after a moment’s search, found a wallet and within it a card.
“He is – or rather was – Sir Humphrey Grenville.”
As I stared down at the simulacrum’s twitching visage, I mourned the passing of the original Sir Humphrey, who knows how long ago.
We later learned that, worldwide, the pulse generators had accounted for the deaths – or rather, the deactivation – of over a hundred thousand simulacra. In Great Britain alone ten thousand perished that day, and we heard many a sad story of distraught spouses and family members discovering palsied simulacra, only to learn much later that their loved ones had died at the hands of the Martians months, and sometimes years, previously.
We left the simulacrum of Sir Humphrey Grenville in its death throes and continued on our way.
It was almost five when we finally arrived at Willow Avenue, thoroughly exhausted by the long walk and by all we had beheld. Miss Lenton returned a little later, a bloodied bandage spanning her forehead. Ministering to others at the first-aid station at Chiswick, she and another nurse had been struck by shrapnel from a tripod exploding nearby. Despite her injuries, however, she was elated with how the fight had gone. I gave her a thorough examination, finding her wounds superficial and gratified that she was not concussed, and ordered her to bed with a sedative.
At six, just as we were finishing a roast beef sandwich and were about to leave the house in order to lend our help at the nearest first-aid station, the telephone bell shrilled.
Holmes picked up the receiver and spoke briefly to the caller, then replaced it and turned to me.
“That was Miss Hamilton-Bell,” he said. “She is at the Martian Embassy.”
“The embassy?” I said in surprise.
“She wishes to see us,” he went on. “Or, rather, the ambassador would like to speak to us.”
“Upon my word,” I exclaimed. “Whatever can the devil want?”
“We shall find out presently, Watson. She is sending a car to pick us up.”
It was almost seven o’clock by the time a cab arrived at Barnes, collected Holmes and myself, and made its slow way back through the shattered streets of central London. Already, I was cheered to see, citizens were at work clearing the debris and making right the damage. Firefighters were putting out the last of the blazes, and a public house, its windows shattered, had a chalked sign outside proclaiming: Business as Usual.
We arrived at the embassy to find a toppled tripod blocking the drive, its cowl shattered like a gourd, and we were forced to step over its extended limbs and proceed on foot.
A cordon of police surrounded the building, keeping a curious though silent crowd of onlookers at bay. We gave our names to a sergeant and were duly escorted inside.
Miss Hamilton-Bell was pacing the foyer, and smiled when we approached. “Mr Holmes, Dr Watson.” She was beaming. “All is well. Indeed, events have proceeded beyond my wildest expectations. The Martians have almost capitulated – well, here in Britain, that is. The fight still goes on abroad, but the news that is coming in is good.”
“You mentioned that the ambassador wishes to speak with us,” Holmes said.
“Just so. He is upstairs in his office, under armed guard.”
“Do you know what the deuce he wants?” I asked as we hurried up the curving staircase.
“I am afraid not, Doctor,” she said. “He refused to say.”
I was a little apprehensive as we crossed to the double doors, outside which a constable stood to attention. He saluted and opened the door to allow us entry.
The Martian ambassador stood before the window, his back to us. Three armed soldiers, their weapons drawn, occupied the room beside himself.
Miss Hamilton-Bell cleared her throat. “Ambassador,” she said. “Mr Holmes and Dr Watson…”
The alien turned, or rather shuffled around to face us. Gone was the braggadocio with which he had last confronted us, in the wagon to Pentonville Gaol. Now he seemed to sag, and his vast dark eyes were lacklustre. He moved slowly towards the desk, steadied himself with a tentacle against its side, and stared at us.
“Mr Holmes, Dr Watson,” he said at last, in barely a croak. “We meet in somewhat altered circumstances.”
“You wished to see us,” Holmes said brusquely. “I suggest you state your reason.”
“Just to… to…” For a second, it seemed that his command of our language had failed him. He cast about for the words with which to express himself, then went on, “Just to say that Professor Moriarty was correct in all he had to say about you, Mr Holmes.”
I glanced at my friend. Holmes maintained his aloofness as he asked, “And what, pray, was that?”
“I made a point of meeting Moriarty when I returned to Mars in the early years,” the ambassador said, “and we had long and interesting conversations. Your name often came up. He held ambivalent emotions towards you, Mr Holmes. While he reviled you, he admitted to a grudging respect. Indeed, he told me that you, and only you, among the many teeming millions of your planet, were his equal; that only you possessed the qualities of intelligence and rationality required to rival his own.” At this point the ambassador made an odd grating sound in his V-shaped mouth, and I wondered if it were a rueful chuckle.
“It is
a great pity,” he went on, “that we did not suborn you to our cause, Mr Holmes – though I suppose we did attempt to, somewhat belatedly, in duplicating you with the simulacrum.”
“Which, I am glad to say,” Holmes put in, “failed signally.”
“I should have heeded Moriarty’s words and realised that you would be a foe amongst foes. But the fact is that I underestimated you, and paid the price. I am given to understand that the professor is dead, killed by your own hands.”
Holmes stared at the alien, and it was some time before he inclined his head. “That is so, yes,” he said.
“I often received the impression,” the ambassador went on, “that Moriarty wanted me to end his suffering, but was too proud to beg.”
“And you, knowing this full well, in your cruelty elected to prolong the hell of his existence.”
“He was valuable to us…” the ambassador said.
At this, Holmes sneered. “No, ambassador. You had his simulacra – you could well have ended his suffering, but in your sadism you elected not to. And to think,” he went on, shaking his head, “that your downfall might have been averted if only you had granted Moriarty his wishes all those years ago: territory of his own on Earth, and a chosen few over which to rule. But no, in your lust for power you denied him this, imprisoned him and copied him and cruelly used his knowledge. And in so doing, ambassador, you turned him against you. In the end, he had only one option left to him – to help bring about the end of your tyranny on Earth.”
The Martian swayed. “He?” he said, confused. “He brought about…?”
“He liaised with the Resistance movement here on Earth, and worked with the Korshanan people to develop the pulse generator, and had Watson and myself deliver it—”
“No!” the ambassador cried, leaning against the desk for support.
Holmes made for the door, and there turned and addressed the Martian for the very last time. “I wish you a long life, ambassador. A long life in which to reflect upon the fact that your personal cruelty was the root cause of your ultimate defeat. Good day to you.”
Whereupon Holmes swept from the room, leaving the Martian ambassador calling after him feebly in his own ugly tongue.
* * *
Two days later I invited a few friends to our rooms in Baker Street.
Miss Freya Hamilton-Bell was present, exhausted from her never-ending duties with the Resistance, but exultant at how the course of events was playing out. Chesterton and Shaw had come out of hiding to celebrate with us, and I remembered to buy beer for Chesterton and carrot juice for Shaw. I located Mr Wells and Miss Fairfield at her apartment in Chelsea, tired but elated after taking part in the rebellion two days earlier. Miss Lenton hurried over from her nursing duties at Chiswick, her head wound now almost healed. Mrs Hudson had laid on a cold spread, and a warm autumn breeze blew in through the open windows of our sitting room as we sat about drinking and discussing the events of the past few days.
Miss Hamilton-Bell relayed the news from Resistance cells around the world: the Martians were virtually defeated in America and Russia, though in China and South America the fight continued. All around the globe, the countries which had succeeded in banishing the Martian scourge were lending arms and munitions to those still at war with the invaders.
“As well as repelling the Martians,” she reported, “the war has achieved the not inconsiderable benefit of bringing nations together which might before have been at loggerheads, and so creating a commonwealth of people with like-minded aims and ambitions to build upon in future.”
Chesterton hoisted his pint glass and drank to that.
“And those Martians who survived the fight, like the ambassador,” I asked, “what of these?”
“They are being rounded up as we speak, Doctor, and shipped back to their own planet, where they will find themselves in Korshanan custody.”
“And the fight on Mars?” Miss Fairfield asked.
Miss Hamilton-Bell smiled. “I am happy to report good news on that front, too. Word has reached the Martian Embassy, via the sub-space communicator: due to the fact that Arkanan resources were stretched to their limits in making fast their grip on Earth, they were complacent in defending their equatorial territories. The Korshana have made great gains, capturing the major cities of Glench-Arkana and Lavat-Lantana. Even as we speak, peace treaties are being drawn up between their races, and I look forward to the day when we can welcome Korshanan delegates to our planet in the spirit of peace.”
“Well said,” Shaw called out.
Holmes, in a mood of abstraction, had moved to the window and was staring out at the small red point of Mars rising through the twilit sky.
“A penny for them, Holmes?” I said.
He turned like an actor upon a stage and addressed the gathering. “Who would have believed, my friends, that in the closing years of the nineteenth century this world was being watched so closely by intelligences greater than our own, and yet just as mortal? Who would have guessed that, as we went about our business, we were being scrutinised and studied like specimens under a microscope? And who would have thought, given all the terror that has befallen our benighted land, that it would end as it has?”
Wells raised his glass to this. “Do you know, Holmes, I’ve been thinking of penning an account of all this horrendous business, the war between our worlds. And if I might borrow from your soliloquy…?”
Holmes smiled. “Feel free,” he said.
I recharged our glasses and Holmes proposed a toast.
“To victory, and to peace,” he said.
We raised our glasses.
“To victory,” we said, “and to peace!”
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
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Sherlock Holmes’s latest case takes him to the heart of Paris, in pursuit of Marguerite Hardy, a mysterious Frenchwoman who fled her English home when she received a strange letter. Desperate for her safe return, her husband begs for Holmes’s help. But Holmes’s investigations will take him and his cousin, Henry Vernier, into a world of theft, seduction and betrayal – and uncover a secret that has been buried for twenty years.
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Following a summons to a fictional patient, Dr Watson finds himself arrested for the horrific murder of an elderly woman. Imprisoned and with the evidence against him, Watson’s only hope is that Sherlock Holmes can discover the identity of the real killer. But when a mysterious letter appears to link Watson to blackmail and a notorious street gang, Holmes must use all his powers of reasoning to save his friend from the hangman’s noose.
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A society lady staged the theft of a priceless ruby and tried to frame her husband – but just as Holmes reveals the truth, she is found murdered. Holmes deduces that this is no crime of passion, but the work of a ruthless killer with no connection to the jewel. With reports of a man in a strange, trance-like state, Holmes finds himself entangled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the sinister Dr Caligari…
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