Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus

by P. C. Martin

  Outside, the bitter air, tinged with its foul reek, stung our faces after the heat and smoke of the den below. The strife had expanded into the street; police sirens and garish lights pierced through the night mist, illuminating the traffic which jostled in every direction, setting an appropriate backdrop for the bloody battle which raged inside the building and out.

  A few policemen, well accoutered in full battle regalia, ran past us through the open door of the Foul Fish and Fowl club whence we had just emerged. Among them I recognized the bulldog countenance and grim-set features of Inspector Lestrade. He did not pause to greet his amateur counterpart, and I admit that neither Holmes nor I spared a thought for the official forces as we swept over the scene in search of our prey.

  “There!” Holmes pointed to a figure, dimly visible through the yellow swirling currents seamed with black shadows, in the act of throwing a bulky bundle into a steam gurney some distance away. “There they are!”

  I started to run thither, but Holmes' hand stayed me. He pulled a long thin bird whistle out of his cuff and blew it three times; a moment later, just as I despaired that our quarry's getaway vehicle had vanished into the gloom, the rumbling of a powerful motor eclipsed the terrible noise around us, and the Widowmak'r sped around the corner and screeched to a halt before us. I scarcely saw the boy who drove it to Holmes' summons; he seemed to have vanished before ever the Widow came to a full stop. Holmes had instantly leaped astride the seat, and I, without a moment's hesitation, vaulted into the sidecar, and we roared off down the street in the direction of the retreating gurney.

  We had not long to drive before we were at their heels, wending furiously along narrow and pitted paths between the dockyards. I saw then that there were at least three vehicles, careening along the streets at a frightful speed. We steadily shortened the distance between us, until we could see the barrels pointed at us from out of the backs of the vehicles we pursued.

  A series of bullets sang past my ear; Holmes signaled to me to return their fire. I replied by raising my arm to fire my rocket-launcher. Though lights in the dockyards and alleys were sparse and altogether dim, my target was plainly visible in the powerful beam of light emitted by the compact Ruhmkorrf lamp fixed between the Widowmak'r's handlebars, and presently a dart-sized missile shot forth from its propulsive nest jutting from my arm, just as the Widow swerved around a protrusion in our path. The diminutive rocket traced a wild course and exploded into flame in the side of a sprawling warehouse.

  I braced my arm again, took steadier aim, and fired. A burning rush of energy shot up into the flesh of my shoulder as another missile dislodged itself from its constricts and, trailing a glittering emission, crashed into the vehicle before us.

  Holmes' lightning reflexes only just saved us from partaking first-hand of the blazing conflagration that had been the steam-gurney in front of us. The Widow sheered wantonly to the left, narrowly abrading the devastated vehicle and its unfortunate occupants, and stormed up a ramp into a boat-builder's shed, through the blackness of which we careened and skidded noisily until Holmes had brought us full-circle, with a few minor collisions along the way, and back down into the street.

  During the moments in which we had been diverted from the chase, our prey had turned away from the maze of streets between the docks, and had far outdistanced us across a broken-up grassy plot expanding into the countryside panorama beyond the industrial fisheries, boat-repairers and clustered warehouses on this side of the river. We followed in their trail, Holmes ever unconscious of the colossal bumps and jostles to which he submitted his vehicle's springs, though we did not achieve our former speed.

  As we left the dim lights of the dockyards behind us, I became aware of something churning the sky above us as we raced along over the pitted ground, skirting rocks and gullies, after our game. I looked up, and in amazement beheld the ponderous under-gusset of a huge dirigible, its rotors whipping the air like a mighty Aeolus of ancient mythology, illuminated from below by the reddish light of several lanterns at the stern and prow of its cabin. It passed over our heads and preceded the Widow easily enough, though our speed could not have been, at that moment, less than fifty miles per hour, and then, slackening its velocity, the airship hovered close above the vehicles we pursued.

  In that whole desolate countryside no lights penetrated the dense darkness all around us, save those emitted by the headlights of the various ground vehicles, and the lanterns attached to the airship. My eyes, however, were not too dim to perceive that a human transfer was being enacted from a gurney to the airship, even as we bumped and jostled our way over the rough knolls at indecent speeds. A long rope ladder, it appeared, had been let down from the flying ship, and by this convenient, if somewhat dangerous, means, a man was endeavoring to climb from certain death or capture into the hallowed freedom of the skies. We were close enough, by that time, to our prey's vehicles, to clearly glimpse the escaping man's face as it came within the glow of the airship's lanterns. It was Pierre Nemo.

  When he had vaulted over the side of the elongated cabin, the airship arrested its forward motion, and, performing a perfectly executed about-face, glided over our heads in a south-westerly course. Holmes veered the Widowmak'r around at once in the direction of the city of London, and leaving the remaining occupants of the gurneys to the attention of the agents of the law, whose vehicles I could see racing furiously in the fugitives' tracks with all the velocity they could muster, we resumed our pursuit of the airborne dirigible.

  Holmes was compelled to pay closer attention than was his wont to the terrain over which we sped, for the ground was pitted with rocks and deep gashes, and more than once I felt the sickening feeling of weightlessness as we sailed headlong over protrusions in our path, or skidded precariously across ridges lined with brambles. Thankfully, Holmes was an expert cross-country driver, and the Widowmak'r was by no means a machine that required delicate handling. The thought of an upset while driving at high speed in the countryside frightened me far less than the prospect of a violent collision with a team of draft horses pulling pig iron in the heart of a busy London thoroughfare. Nevertheless, as we careened and pitched our way over the uneven ground, I braced my body tightly and committed my health and that of my companion to Heaven's keeping.

  As space, matter and time flew past in a billowing, almost shapeless, rush, I despaired that we should ever catch our quarry, nor even approach the airship nearly enough for me to get a decent shot at it; however, its steady course seemed to be affected by a change in the wind currents upon which it had apparently relied hitherto, for we presently found ourselves gaining rapidly on the massive sky-bound vehicle. By this time the Widow was hurtling through the silent streets of some factory town on the outskirts of the Metropolis, which enabled us to greatly increase our speed, but if we had left the dangers of the uneven Kentish countryside behind us, the greater peril yet preceded us in the sky, and every yard we advanced brought us closer within the range of the airship's guns.

  An enormous moon broke through the clouds, and by its radiance I saw that the airship's deck was teeming with Rajput warriors, recognizable by their helmets, and armed with the fluted rifle peculiar to their order, which I knew to be capable of firing explosive bullets more than half an inch in diameter. Even now we were being made the targets of these deadly projectiles, and again and again I heard a high sizzling sound rush past my ears, followed by a dull explosion as the bullets made contact with solid resistance. Holmes swerved the Widow about with such animation and violence, I felt as though I were on a ship at high seas in the middle of a hurricane. Willing myself to keep my eyes off the buildings and curbs we skirted so narrowly in our dizzying dance all over the street, I attempted to target the airship with my rocket-launcher; twice my projectiles flew wide of their mark, and as I painstakingly took aim a third time, I heard Holmes' voice shout at me, though I could not hear his words above the wind rushing in my ears.

  Holmes suddenly swung his long arm and whacked me
soundly on the side of my head. I turned at once in surprised protest; though Holmes' eyes were turned to the road, his finger pointed fiercely at the hood of the sidecar. He shouted again, and this time I understood his words.

  “Pull the lever, Watson! Now, now, now!”

  I searched for a lever, and found an unfamiliar knob in the sidecar's paneling. I pulled it hard, and to my amazement, a huge Gatling gun emerged from the sidecar's hood. A pair of long-handled levers slid out of matching crannies on either side of my seat, and beckoned me by their very novelty to fondle their gleaming mechanisms. I had had some small experience upon the battlefield with weapons of this sort, but, knowing Holmes' penchant for tinkering with and remodeling the innards of all of his contraptions, I was unsure how the gun would react to my handling.

  Fortunately, at speeds of more than 80 miles per hour, on the heels of armed criminals in a magnificent dirigible, I had not much time for hesitation. Twice I heard the clink of metal ricocheting off my mechanical arm, as their massive bullets sang perilously close to their marks, shattering on contact, spraying shrapnel every which way. Fixing my gaze carefully, and bringing the huge gun's firing range within my line of vision, I awaited Holmes cue, and when it came, I braced my fingers around the levers, and set the machinery in motion.

  I became dimly conscious of two things as my destructive monster peppered the air before us and our wheels crunched over the irregular debris occasioned by our bullets, and those shot from the Rajput rifles; first, that for all the recoiling effects upon the Widowmak'r and its sidecar, I might have been firing a stationary revolver at 300 rounds a minute, for we lost not a moment of our speed, nor felt even the slightest tremor of whiplash. Secondly, I was aware that it was not by any effort of mine that the whirling gun continued its repeated firing. It fired away merrily by its own volition, until I ascertained that a simple command grip on the left lever served to both halt and commence the process of firing, while the action of the right lever adjusted the direction in which the nose of my weapon pointed

  Can I describe the sensations which traversed my being at that moment? We had left the streets lined with darkling factories behind us, and, having strayed from the narrow road, found ourselves once more sailing over hilly pasture-land in pursuit of our target. The countryside, luminous now under the glowing moonlight and reflections of the vehicular lamps, afforded the Widow greater agility of movement. The dirigible before us disappeared briefly from sight behind a low ridge, as we traversed a depressed stretch of ground; Holmes turned the Widow abruptly northward, away from the dirigible's course, and traced a path up a knoll. I glanced around to locate the airship, but our progress took us around a hill which hid the ship completely from my view.

  In our long years of association, I have come to trust Holmes' methods, though I admit that for the merest instant I feared that Holmes had finally doomed the chase to failure, and resigned himself to retreat. But my fears were unfounded, for as we reached the summit of the rise, there, hovering over the wide valley before us, was the airship. I saw my target as the Widow screeched to a stop.

  Holmes' cry of “FIRE, WATSON!” was drowned as my enormous gun belched murderously from the depths of its revolutions; suddenly the skyline before us was gloriously illuminated with such a display of fireworks as my eyes had never seen.

  The hydrogen-filled chambers of the airship's body exploded one by one with a fearsome roar that shook the very air, and then, fragment after fragment of burning material floated or fell to the earth below.

  Amidst this glorious display, my heart was wrenched by the cries of the wretched fugitives, trapped in the inferno by the very element that had given them their wings. The screams of terror were indeed horrifying, and I saw more than one man leap to certain death on the uneven plain fifty feet beneath their burning ship. The aircraft, with its gas chambers rapidly consumed by the starving, passionate flames, drifted through the air in a lazy, unguided descent, and foundered at last on the slope of a knoll, a trail of burning debris scattered in its wake.

  How long we sat there, watching the fires consume themselves to glowing embers, I cannot tell. By degrees, however, the panorama before us was overrun with the proper agents of law and order, our allies in the chase, who, guided by the sounds and sight of the airship's destruction, had caught up at last—too late—with the quarry we had come to seek.

  Chapter Seven

  There were no survivors found amid the debris of the terrible accident. Of the twenty-four bodies recovered from the scene, at least three unarmored corpses matched the given proportions of Pierre Nemo, although these were so scorched and charred they could not be definitely identified. Nothing remained of the magnificent dirigible but its badly mangled metal hull and fittings, and of its contents only a few articles of weaponry and other sundry articles escaped the searing heat of the exploding gases.

  Holmes and I retired from the scene in the early hours of the morning, when dawn was just beginning to efface the darkness with its fingering tendrils. Mycroft Holmes, pale and weary from the long night's exertions, but ever possessed of her nobility and grace of carriage, met us on the skirt of the hillock. Holmes slowed the Widow and shook her hand warmly. Brother and sister conversed in hushed tones for a moment, and then, with a word and a courteous nod in my direction, Miss Holmes turned and headed back towards a cluster of uniformed men a few dozen yards distant. Holmes said not a word to me during the long ride back home. Even his habitual recklessness seemed to have been satiated for the time being, and we reached our flat in Baker Street without incident or ceremony.

  When I awoke later that day, Holmes was nowhere to be found. Mrs Hudson, upon my inquiries, informed me that he had left Baker Street on his noisy motor-bicycle quite early that morning; shortly after we had arrived home, in fact. I wondered where he had gone, and half-expected to receive a message or note of summons. None came, however, and I remained all that day, alone with my thoughts, in our apartments.

  The events of the previous night were blurred in my mind into a continuous scene of smoke-ravaged violence and devastation. Our failure to retrieve the fugitives alive—nay, the fact that I had been responsible for the deaths of so many—weighed very heavily upon my soul. The face of Pierre Nemo, when he looked up into my eyes from the body of his cherished lover, haunted my thoughts. Engaged with my morose pensiveness, I lounged indoors for several long, aimless days.

  On Sunday evening a dreadful roar engulfed the air, followed by the familiar screeching and thumping sounds of the Widowmak'r's incarceration in the ground-floor garage. I smiled, despite myself. The door flew open, and Holmes came in—I should say he staggered in—and immediately collapsed into his favorite armchair.

  “The old reaction is upon me, Watson,” said he in a weary voice, by way of greeting. “I shall be as limp as a dust-rag for weeks.”

  “But Holmes,” said I, “what is the matter? Where have you been these past days?”

  “Not now, Watson,” replied Holmes with a hearty yawn. “I can think of nothing I desire more than to put my feet up, except perhaps to consume something nourishing, for I am famished beyond belief. I have been rather hard on myself these last few days. Has Lestrade come yet?"

  "No," I replied.

  "Oh well, I'm expecting him here at around nine. I have a bit of news for him, and I thought I may as well tell it him in person as send him a wire. Mycroft ought to be here any minute now too. I arranged to meet both them here at nine o'clock, and it's ten minutes past already. But if my ears mistake not, there is the bell."

  It was the Inspector. “Good evening, doctor Watson,” said he, shaking himself free of coat, hat and scarf. “Mr. Holmes in yet?”

  Holmes himself affirmed his presence in a sleepy voice that issued weakly from the depths of his chair, whither he was curled up, invisible from the door. "Come in, Lestrade. Good of you to come. Pray take a cigar and a seat. Now we have only to await Mycroft's arrival. Oh, that sister of mine! If only she had deigned to ac
company me on the Widowmak'r, I might be allowed to take to my bed in half-an-hour. But no, of all the motor-vehicles in London at her disposal, she must needs take the one most nearly related to the snail. Alas! You don't mind waiting, I hope, Lestrade?”

  Lestrade's hand paused on its course toward the coal scuttle, where Holmes insisted on keeping his store of cigars, and he looked up with an almost apologetic air on his gloomy face. "Oh, I'm afraid Miss Holmes has had a contretemps of sorts, Mr Holmes; as I was coming here in person, she wished me to inform you that she received a rather urgent summons from somewhere up in the highest quarters, and that she will pop around sometime tomorrow."

  “Well,” said Holmes, brightening noticeably, “that's something of a consolation all around, wouldn't you say, Lestrade? I think an early bed will do us all worlds of good. How have the investigations been coming along?"

  "We've been busy at it, that's for sure," Lestrade said, vainly attempting to stifle a gaping yawn. "We've scoured London from rim to sole, end to end, and not a trace of that Nemo fellow. I'm beginning to wonder whether he isn't really dead after all. For all we know, his might be one of the bodies in stasis at the mortuary.”

  "Perhaps so, and yet... and yet..." Holmes broke off, and lapsed into pensive silence. "Well, never mind that for now. It doesn't do to brood on matters which are beyond one's control. One can only do one's best, after all, eh Lestrade?"

  The worthy fellow agreed with Holmes on that point.

  "Oh, by the way, Lestrade,” said Holmes, “of course you know that Sir James' death was murder after all, and not suicide.”

  “Hmm, I suspected as much. Can you prove it, Mr. Holmes?”

  “The sleeve of the dressing gown I took away for testing contained definite traces of hydrogen cyanide, of a particularly concentrated solution,” Holmes said, rummaging in a stack of odd papers pinned by his pocketknife to the mantelpiece. “A handkerchief impregnated with the solution, held against the respiratory ducts for a very brief moment, would have accomplished the deed beautifully, and was undoubtedly the method employed by the killer in question. Naturally the handkerchief was destroyed almost beyond recognition as such, but I correctly imagined that a drop or two of the poison might have dripped from the handkerchief onto the sleeve. I may add that the empty bottle was found in one of the flowerbeds, complete with damning fingerprints—Where is that blasted paper? Ah!” Having located his objective among the sundry residents of the mantelpiece, Holmes handed a sheet of blotting paper to Lestrade, who read its contents and whistled.