by Rick Yancey
There was nothing von Helrung could do at that point but tell his English colleague everything, from the delivery of the nidus on that freezing February morning and the horrific demise of its unwitting courier, to the disappearance of Warthrop and the fate of the traitor responsible for it. He emphasized, with an eyebrow cocked at Torrance, that all else was mere conjecture. We did not know, for example, if the Russians had found the home of Typhoeus magnificum.
“Well, it’s been what?” asked Torrance. “Over four months now? Plenty of time if Warthrop got it right, which he did.”
“And how do you know that, Jacob?” von Helrung demanded. He was beginning to regret, I think, including Torrance in our rescue mission.
Torrance shrugged. “He’s Warthrop.”
“Let’s pray he did,” said Walker. “A living magnificum would be the crowning achievement of our discipline.”
“I don’t think the czar gives a tinker’s damn about any crowns except his own,” Torrance said, and laughed. “If the Russians have it, we won’t be seeing it in the Monstrumarium anytime soon!”
Von Helrung was nodding. His expression was very grave. “I’m afraid Dr. Torrance is correct, at least in this particular aspect. If the magnificum should fall into the wrong hands…” He shuddered. The thought was unbearable.
Not so much to Torrance, though. He seemed intrigued by the possibilities. “It would change everything, gentlemen. It would shift the entire balance of power in Europe—maybe the world. Alexander conquered half of it. Think what he would have done with arrows dipped in monster snot!”
“Must you, Torrance?” whined Walker. “Why did you become a monstrumologist, anyway?”
“Well, I do like to kill things…”
“Enough!” cried von Helrung. He slammed his pudgy hand upon the tabletop. “We are forgetting why we are here. We worry first about freeing Pellinore. Then we worry about monster snot.” He bore down on Walker. “We cannot go before a magistrate, and we will not convince his doctor. What does that leave us?” “As I’ve said, if it’s determined he isn’t a danger to himself or the public, he may be released to a family member.”
“Hmmm,” Torrance hummed. “Too bad his nephew is dead.”
“We must be careful not to arouse their suspicion, or we shall find ourselves in rooms adjoining Pellinore’s,” mused von Helrung. “They are convinced of his condition or they would have released him. A ruse might succeed, but there is no way for us to forewarn him. How can he play a part if he cannot read the script?”
“He can’t,” Torrance said. “But he doesn’t have to.” He turned to Walker. “We’ll need someone to vouch for us. Someone the superintendent there knows and trusts and who’d be willing to play a supporting role. Got anybody like that in mind?”
Walker thought for a moment, sucking on the extinct tobacco in his bowl. Then he smiled around the tooth-dented stem, his rat eyes glinting wickedly.
“By George, I believe I have.”
Walker’s bit player was a compact, athletic-looking man in his early thirties, with very dark, short-cropped hair and even darker deep-set eyes. We met up with him the next morning a few miles west of London, outside the gatehouse of the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum.
After introducing von Helrung and me (Torrance, at the urging of von Helrung, had remained behind; I think Meister Abram was concerned his presence might turn a delicate situation into a dangerous one), Walker quickly reviewed our hastily drawn-up plan to win Warthrop’s immediate release. His friend suggested a few tweaks in our script but overall seemed pleased with the outline of our little scheme.
“I met Warthrop once, you know,” he told us. “Must have been ’77 or ’78, while I was studying at the university in Edinburgh. He’d come to consult with Dr. Bell on some matter or other—I don’t know precisely. Bell was very mysterious about it. He cut a striking figure, I remember that—very tall and lean, with the most piercing black eyes that seemed to slice right through you. He shook my hand and said, quite casually, as if he were remarking upon the weather, ‘A pleasure to meet you. You have recently returned from London, I perceive.’ I was astounded. How had he known that? Bell swore to me afterward he hadn’t told him, and I must confess I never quite believed my old professor’s denial. I have always meant to ask Warthrop how he knew—”
Von Helrung gently cut off the loquacious Scotsman, saying, “And we are delighted to present you with the opportunity! I am sure Pellinore will remember the encounter. His memory is as prodigious as his powers of observation and deduction. It is a gross injustice that he is here. I assure you, sir, he is no more mad than you or me, and we will be forever in your debt for helping us affect his speedy release from his lonely sojourn behind these walls! Lead, sir, and we shall follow!”
And so he did, through the gatehouse, where the watchman directed us to check in at the clerk’s office, located in the main building, a simple—if somewhat imposing—three-story building at the far side of the spacious front grounds. As we walked along the gravel path toward it, my heart began to race as my eyes sought out the doctor. I was excited, apprehensive, and a little frightened. If our impetuous plan should fail, he might never walk out the gates of this place.
I did not see the monstrumologist, but I saw other patients tending shrubbery with pruning shears and watering cans, some carrying loads of laundry and baskets of bread from the washhouse and bakery, and some in leisurely perambulation about the well-tended lawn, deep in earnest conversation or convulsed in carefree laughter, as if they were holiday campers out for a Sunday stroll in the park rather than patients in a lunatic asylum. I did not know it then, but Hanwell was well ahead of its time in the treatment of the mentally ill. Plop a poor soul from an American asylum—Blackwell’s Island, for example—into Hanwell, and he might have thought he had died and gone to heaven.
I do not think Warthrop would agree with me, though.
Our coconspirator signed us in at the front office.
“Dr. Hiram Walker, Mr. Abraham Henry, and grandson, to see the superintendent,” he informed the clerk. “And please tell him Dr. Conan Doyle is with them.”
“Arthur Conan Doyle! It is indeed a pleasure, sir,” the superintendent of Hanwell Lunatic Asylum said as he ushered us into his private office. “I must
confess to you that I am quite the ardent admirer of your writing. My wife, too. She will be green with envy when I tell her I’ve met the creator of the great Sherlock Holmes!”
Conan Doyle accepted the praise humbly; in fact, he seemed almost embarrassed by it, and quickly changed the subject.
“I hope you’ve had the opportunity to read my note this morning,” he said.
“Yes, I have it here somewhere,” said the superintendent, rifling through the stacks of papers on his desk. “I shall keep it, if you don’t mind, as a memento of… Yes, here it is; I have it. Ah, yes, William Henry. A very interesting case.”
“This is Dr. Walker, a good friend of mine and Mr. Henry’s personal physician,” said Conan Doyle. “And this gentleman is Mr. Abraham Henry, William’s father, and this is his grandson, William’s eldest child, William Jr.”
“Billy,” von Helrung piped in. “The family calls him Billy, Herr Doctor.”
“You are German, Mr. Henry?”
“I am Austrian, but my son William was born in America.”
The superintendent was surprised. “But Mr. Boatman claimed your son was a British citizen.”
“He is, he is,” said von Helrung quickly. “Noah did not deceive you, Herr Doctor. William was born in America but immigrated to this country when he was twenty to study medicine—at the University of…” He was drawing a blank. So hasty had been our preparations, we had not thought to fill in every page in Warthrop’s fictitious history.
“Edinburgh,” Conan Doyle. “A year or so after I left.”
“And then he falls in love with a girl here, gets married, and becomes citizen,” von Helrung finished with a loud sigh of relief.
“Ah, Annabelle,” the superintendent said.
“Who?”
“Annabelle, Mr. Henry’s wife, your daughter-in-law.”
“Ack! Forgive an old man for the paucity of his faculties. I thought you said something else about… something else. Yes, poor, dear Annabelle! He loved her with a love that was more than love, in this kingdom by the sea.”
“Yes,” the superintendent concurred with a slight frown. “Though Mr. Boatman never mentioned there were children by the marriage. In fact, he told us that he, Mr. Boatman, was the only family William had.”
“Well, my grandson Noah is correct, in a manner of speaking.”
“In a manner of speaking?”
“I will explain.”
“I am anxious that you do,” the superintendent replied with a puzzled look toward Conan Doyle, who was smiling noncommittally. The author drummed his fingers nervously on his bowler hat.
Von Helrung tried his best. “Noah’s mother—William’s only sibling—died tragically at the age of twenty-two, when Noah was but three years old—the consumption. He was her only child. At the time, I was living with my wife, Helena, in Massachusetts, where we had raised William and Gertrude—”
“Gertrude?” The superintendent had begun taking notes. It was not an encouraging development.
“Ja, she is William’s sister, Noah’s mother, and my dear, dead daughter, Helena.”
“Helena?”
“I mean Gertrude. She was the spitting image of her mother; often I called her Helena by mistake.” He scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders, sighed. “Now I do not know where I am.”
Walker chimed in helpfully, “Gertrude has just died.”
“Gertrude, yes.” Von Helrung nodded somberly. “She was too young. Too young!”
“Then Noah was raised by his father, your son-in-law?”
“For a time, until he died, when Noah was seventeen.”
“How did he die?”
“He drowned.”
“Drowned?”
“He had too much to drink one night and fell off his fishing boat into the Thames—he’d never recovered from Helena’s death, you see—”
“Gertrude,” Walker corrected him. “Helena hasn’t died yet.”
“William’s mother is still alive?”
“Oh, no, I just haven’t gotten to her yet. My darling wife passed away last year of the dropsy—and that is what began it, I would say.”
“Began… what?”
“William’s slow march into darkness. He was very close to his mother, more so than most sons, I would say. And then when the tiger tore his sweet Annabelle limb from limb!” Von Helrung’s lower lip quivered; he tried to force a tear. “Oh, may God have mercy on my boy! May I see him now, Herr Doctor?”
“I’m afraid I’m still a bit confused, Mr. Henry, about the family history. You see this? This is the admission form signed under oath by your grandson, stating Mr. Henry had no living relatives other than himself. It’s a discrepancy that must be resolved before we can release him.”
“Hemmm. If I may.” Walker rested a hand on von Helrung’s arm. “Noah Boatman has not been in touch with the family in years.”
“The blackest of sheep,” von Helrung interjected tearfully.
“I would not wish to cast aspersions upon Mr. Boatman’s character,” Walker went on. “It is entirely plausible he thought he was the sole surviving relative, having neither seen nor heard from Abraham in decades.”
“But surely he would know about William’s children.” The superintendent was now looking at me. I squirmed in my chair.
“I was raising the children, in America,” von Helrung said hastily.
“You were raising them? Why?”
“Because they were…” Von Helrung was beginning to panic.
“It is delicate; I hope you can understand,” Walker said, stepping into the breach.
“I am trying very hard to, Dr. Walker.”
“They are the children of William’s first marriage,” von Helrung said. Beside him Walker stiffened suddenly, as if someone had just hit him very hard in the back.
“His first marriage?” the superintendent asked.
“In America, before he came here and met Isabel.”
“Annabelle,” Walker corrected him. “
Ja. The children live with us—me. My wife is dead of the dropsy.” Von Helrung swung his thick arm around my shoulder. “The dropsy.”
“Well,” the superintendent said slowly. “I suppose the only way to clear this up is to speak with Mr. Boatman.”
“Ahhh! Mein Gott!” von Hlrung cried out. He slumped forward in his chair.
“You are about to tell me that Mr. Boatman is dead, aren’t you?” asked the superintendent.
It was ironic, I later thought, that this was the one nugget of truth in the entire passel of lies.
If not for our recruitment of the superintendent’s literary idol, I do not think our ill-conceived and worse-executed plan would have succeeded. The presence of Conan Doyle probably kept us from being booted from the asylum forthwith—or locked up there until a qualified visiting physician could examine us.
“I’m afraid I must share a bit of the responsibility for William Henry’s condition,” Conan Doyle confessed.
“You, Dr. Doyle?”
“It appears from what Dr. Walker has told me that a portion at least of his delusions are based upon my stories.”
“Which portion might that be? I have interviewed the patient at length, and I do not recall…”
“Well, his occupation for one. There is not so much difference between a consulting detective and a hunter of monsters—a distinction more than a difference. And, of course,” he added casually with a shrug of powerful shoulders (Conan Doyle was a star cricket player and avid golfer), “the name.”
“Whose name?”
“Mr. Henry’s. Not his real name. The name he chose for himself, Pellinore Warthrop.”
“I am sorry, Dr. Doyle. I don’t recall seeing that name in your work.”
“Because you are not an American. In the States, Holmes’s name is Warthrop.”
“It is?”
“It’s not uncommon to change a character’s name to suit the tastes of a particular culture.”
The superintendent expressed his surprise. He’d had no idea that Great Britain’s Sherlock Holmes was America’s Pellinore Warthrop. It seemed to shake him to his existential marrow, for if Holmes were not, well, Holmes, then he would not be Holmes!
“Can I see him now?” von Helrung pleaded. “I assure you, sir, he will know me, his father, and if not me, Billy here, his son. We would take him back to America with us, but if you say no, we cannot. Have mercy and do not send us away without at least the chance to say good-bye!”
The superintendent relented then. I doubt he believed for a second one word of our outlandish story, but he was curious now—intensely curious—to see how this bizarre play might end. He rang for the keeper of Warthrop’s ward, who appeared a moment later.
“Where is Mr. Henry this morning?” the superintendent inquired.
“In his room, sir, as usual. After breakfast I asked if he’d care for a walk in the garden, but he refused again.”
“Did he eat his breakfast this morning?”
“Sir, he hurled it at my head.”
“He’s in one of his moods today.”
“Yes, sir, one of the bad ones.”
“Perhaps his visitors will lighten his spirits. Please let him know. We shall be up momentarily.” He turned to us. “Last week Mr. Henry ended a hunger strike—his third since coming to Hanwell. ‘I would gladly die,’ he told me. ‘But I will be damned to give you the satisfaction!’ I must say, Dr. Walker, your patient has developed a highly sophisticated delusion, the most detailed and intricate that I’ve ever encountered. A ‘philosopher in the natural science of aberrant biology,’ he calls himself, a ‘monstrumologist,’ one of several hundred around the world who dev
ote themselves to the study and eradication of certain malevolent species, upon which he claims to be the foremost expert. He claims to belong to a ‘society’ of these so-called monstrumologists, based in New York City, the president of which—”
“Is me,” finished von Helrung sadly. “I know this story, Herr Superintendent. Alas, I have heard it many times. To William I am not Abraham Henry, humble shoemaker from Stubenbach, but Abram von Helrung, the head of this imaginary society of monstrumologists. And young William here, not William anymore, no! But Will Henry, his faithful apprentice who aids him in this mythical monster hunting of his.”
“He even includes me in his fantasy,” Walker interjected. “I am, it seems, also a member of the Monstrumologist Society, somewhat of a rival, too, substantially more accomplished and therefore a threat to him—”
Von Helrung cleared his throat noisily, and said, “I want to take him home. He is no danger to anyone—unless you happen to be a three-headed dragon! My grandson, God rest his soul, should never have taken upon himself the burden that rightly belongs to the father. I came at once, as soon as I heard he was here. I will leave at once, as soon as I see my boy again. Will you bring me to my boy now, Herr Superintendent, to ease his burden and my own?”
We were escorted to the third floor, where the most dangerous inmates were housed. There were no bars on the doors, but the locks were sturdy and in the rooms the furniture was bolted to the floor. Some rooms were padded for the patients’ own protection, but no one was shackled or restrained in any way, another humane distinction of the Hanwell philosophy. It occurred to me that Warthrop could have suffered a fate much worse than confinement in a house of the mad. No doubt it had been torture for him; without question he had suffered to be sane and to have that very sanity cited as the proof of his madness, but he was alive. He was alive.
The keeper of the ward was waiting for us in the hall. The superintendent nodded to him, the keeper threw back the bolt and swung wide the door, and I saw my master seated on the small bed on the other side, wearing a white robe and slippers that seemed to glow in the shaft of light pouring through the window behind him. He was pale and thin and haggard but alive, his exile at its end, alive—the monstrumologist.