by Marvin Kaye
“You see the significance, Mr. Holmes?” Belknap opened his eyes.
“Indeed. I had, inevitably, anticipated the rebus,” Holmes replied. “As for the rest, the urgency of the matter is apparent. These devotees of a being whose nature demands further investigation have followed the despoilers of their deity’s image all the way from Sumatra. Clearly, they will not rest until they have recovered the plaque stolen by Sefton Talliard. In order to preserve your own life, as well as Professor Talliard’s, the immediate return of the stolen item to its self-proclaimed owners is essential.”
“That is my conclusion. But my own efforts have failed to locate Talliard here in London, and lately, I have noted the presence of silent blue-eyed hounds upon my trail. Within the last forty-eight hours, they have drawn near, and I fear that my time is all but gone. Can you assist me, Mr. Holmes?”
“Beyond doubt. There is one point, however, that must be noted, at the outset; which is, that your colleague appears to withhold information of some vital significance. In view of the character-portrait you’ve limned, that is hardly surprising. Presumably the nature of the missing piece will reveal itself when I have located Professor Talliard, which I fully expect to do in a matter of hours, if not less.”
“But that is astonishing, Mr. Holmes!” the visitor exclaimed. “I have scoured London for weeks, without gleaning the slightest clue.”
“I’ve certain local resources, to which a stranger in the city is unlikely to enjoy access,” Holmes replied, not unkindly. “Now, Professor Belknap, here is a question of some import. Were you followed to Baker Street, this evening?”
“I believe so.” Belknap shivered. “Yes, I am quite certain of it.”
“Excellent,” Holmes replied, to my amazement.
I could not fathom my friend’s clear satisfaction, and the visitor was equally confounded.
“I must leave you, for a little while,” Holmes abruptly informed his client. “I shall return within the half hour.” He departed without further explanation, leaving me alone with August Belknap, who, unaccustomed to the eccentric character of my friend’s genius, appeared thunderstruck.
It was perhaps the slowest half hour I have ever endured. Poor Belknap, distracted and raw-nerved, could not even pretend interest in the tales of the Afghan campaign with which I endeavored to entertain him, but started and flinched at every unexpected sound. Presently, all conversation died, and we sat in comfortless silence, until the clock struck nine, and, to my unutterable relief, Sherlock Holmes reappeared.
“The apparatus has been readied,” Holmes declared. “It remains only to set the machine in motion. For that, Professor, I must request use of your amusing disguise. We are much of a build. My own clothes should fit you well enough to serve on a foggy night. Take them, return to your own lodgings, and do not stir forth until you have heard from me. Where are you staying?”
The visitor named an address in Fleet Street.
“I assume you frequently change location?”
“Every few days,” Belknap admitted. “But I never succeed in throwing them off the track for long.”
“After tonight, that should not signify.” So saying, Holmes ushered the visitor into his own room.
When they emerged, minutes later, I could not forbear staring, so startled was I by the transformation. August Belknap, clad in borrowed Inverness and deerstalker, might at a glance have been mistaken for Sherlock Holmes. Holmes himself, in feminine array, complete with wig, wide hat, and veiling, was altogether unrecognizable.
“Now, Professor,” Holmes instructed his client, “Wait for half an hour after Dr. Watson and I have departed —”
“Eh!” I exclaimed.
“Then return to Fleet Street, and stay inside tomorrow. You are the lesser target, and probably not in immediate danger, but do not open the door to anyone other than myself or Watson.”
“Mr. Holmes, I will follow your instructions without fail.”
“Capital. And now, my dear Watson, I trust you will not suffer a lady to venture forth unescorted?” Holmes’s amused smile was dimly visible through the veiling.
“Venture forth where?” I inquired.
“Not far. A half-hour’s stroll should suffice.”
I remained unenlightened, but acquiescent. Pausing only long enough to don an overcoat, I accompanied Sherlock Holmes out into the fog-blinded March night. Together we set off at a leisurely pace along Baker Street.
To the end of my days, I will always remember that walk, and I will never recall it without a pang of profound uneasiness. For that sense of being watched, so graphically described by Professor August Belknap, was present, powerful, and impossible to ignore. I could have taken my oath that the shadows seethed with silent, sliding shapes, and I could literally feel the pressure of invisible regard. It was all I could do to refrain from glancing continually back over my shoulder, and the flesh between my shoulderblades positively tingled in anticipation of a blow. I considered Belknap’s account of the Faithful’s headless victims, and my own head momentarily swam.
If Sherlock Holmes shared my misgivings, he showed no sign of it. His step was unhurried, his manner unconcerned, as he launched into an impressively knowledgeable discussion of the evolution of the kabuki dance drama. My friend spoke brilliantly, yet I scarcely heard a word of his discourse, for my ears were attuned to nothing beyond the tap of footsteps in the fog behind us. And my disquiet, already intense, increased a hundredfold when Holmes led us from the relatively well-lit, populous public thoroughfares, into the silent pathways of Regent’s Park. We were nearing the Zoo, before he finally paused, in a region of impenetrable shadow.
“That should be enough,” Holmes opined.
I did not waste breath begging for an explanation, but waited in silence as he divested himself of hat, wig, pelisse, and skirts, to reveal ordinary masculine attire beneath.
“Now, Watson, we separate,” he decreed. “You may take the direct route back to Baker Street, and I shall go roundabout. And by this time tomorrow night, we shall beyond doubt have located the missing Professor Talliard.”
With that, he vanished silently into the dark, leaving me alone, bewildered, filled with resentment, and more than a little apprehension. I made my way home without hindrance. Belknap had left, and Holmes had not yet returned, which was just as well. If I had encountered my friend at that moment, I should hardly have found myself capable of civility. I retired early, and slept soundly, my dreams somehow flavoured with the sound of Sherlock Holmes’s violin.
Holmes had resumed his chemical experimentation by the time I awoke. His violin lay on the sofa — evidently he had been playing it during the night. His pallour and shadowed eyes suggested sleeplessness. Still somewhat piqued by last night’s events, I refused to question him, but rather, occupied myself with a series of errands that kept me out and about for the entire day. Around twilight, I returned to Baker Street, to discover Holmes still occupied with his test tubes, beakers, and burners. Nor was his attention to be diverted from these items, until a dubious Mrs. Hudson entered to announce the arrival of “Master Wiggins, and associates.”
“Ah, show them in,” Holmes instructed, his face alight with eagerness. Noting my puzzlement, he explained, “The Baker Street Irregulars. They have been at work since I put them on the case last night.”
Here, then, was the explanation of Holmes’s half-hour absence of the previous evening. He had withdrawn to confer with his juvenile surveillance squad.
Moments later, a sextet of ragged and remarkably filthy little street Arabs burst into the room. Their chief Wiggins, tallest and oldest among them, swaggered forward to announce with an air of victory, “Plunker ’ere cops the prize.”
The Plunker in question, a superlatively disreputable urchin, flashed a snaggle-toothed grin.
“State your findings,” Holmes commanded.
“Shadowed yer last night, Guv’nor, as per orders.” Master Wiggins appeared to act as official spokesman of th
e party. “Soon spied the others on yer trail, just like yer said, and rummy little apes they was, too. Not ’arf ugly. Arfter yer gives ’em the slip in the Park, they splits up, so we splits up. Plunker follows one of’em as far as Notting ’ill Gate, and finds more of the same, ’angling about a lodging ’ouse. Plunker keeps an eye peeled, twigs their game, and knows ’e’s nailed yer man. And there you ’ave it.”
“Well done, gentlemen. Can you furnish an address?”
Wiggins obliged.
“Second storey, front room,” Plunker offered.
“Well done,” Holmes repeated. He produced a guinea. “Plunker, your reward.”
“Cor!” Plunker’s crooked grin widened.
“For the rest of you — the usual scale of pay, for two days work.” Holmes distributed silver. “Gentlemen, until next time.”
The delighted irregulars withdrew, no doubt to our landlady’s relief.
“Phew!” I observed.
“There is no time to be lost, Watson,” Holmes declared. “Sefton Talliard’s hours are numbered.”
A hansom carried us to the house noted by the youthful intelligencer. The place was respectable-looking, well-maintained, and unremarkable. We alighted from our vehicle, and I gazed searchingly about, but caught no glimpse of lurking figures. The sense of being watched, so unnervingly acute last night in Regent’s Park, was absent now. And yet, I knew not why, I found that my hands were icy, and my heart was cold with a formless dread.
A couple of taps of the polished brass knocker drew the landlady. Holmes introduced himself as a friend of the American gentleman on the second floor, and she admitted us without demur. We hurried upstairs, and rapped on Sefton Talliard’s door. There was no response, and my sense of dread deepened.
The room was locked. Our combined strength easily sufficed to force it open, and we burst in to confront a scene I shudder to recall. I am a surgeon, fully accustomed to sights that many would consider ghastly, yet all my experience could not fully prepare me for the spectacle of Sefton Talliard’s headless corpse, sprawled on a blood-drenched bed. I think an exclamation escaped me, and I recoiled a pace or two. Sherlock Holmes was guilty of no such weakness. Casting a keen, penetrating eye about the death chamber, he stepped first to the locked window, then to the fireplace, which he knelt to examine briefly. Thereafter, he turned his attention upon the clothing, books, papers, and personal articles that lay wildly scattered everywhere. That Talliard’s room had been thoroughly rifled was altogether apparent. The object of my friend’s search was less evident, however. Initially, I assumed that he sought the plaque sacrilegiously pried from the pedestal of Ur-Allazoth’s image, but that could scarcely be; for surely the murderers, here before us and purposeful beyond civilized ken, would already have reclaimed that article. It then occurred to me that Holmes sought Talliard’s missing head, but such proved not to be the case. At length, a muted grunt of satisfaction announced his success, and, from that dreadful bloodstained tangle, he plucked a small volume bound in red morocco.
I was not so dull that I failed to recognize Professor Talliard’s prized journal, as described by August Belknap.
Settling himself back upon his haunches with the utmost deliberation, Holmes proceeded to read, indifferent to the presence of the mutilated body on the bed, not two yards behind him. I could scarcely endure it.
“Holmes —” I entreated.
“One moment — ah!” Holmes’s expression altered remarkably, and he sprang to his feet. “There — yes — I had suspected something, but this I did not foresee.”
“Foresee what?” I demanded.
“Come, we must find Belknap at once.”
“We cannot leave this place, Holmes!” I expostulated. “We have happened upon a murder. There are authorities — appropriate channels — proper procedure —”
“They will wait,” Holmes informed me. With some effort, he tore his eyes from the journal. “My client stands in mortal peril. Should he perish, it is through my own failure of intellect.”
Such a prospect was not to be contemplated.
“No delay, Watson! Belknap’s life hangs by a thread.” Thrusting Talliard’s journal into his pocket, Holmes rose and rushed from the room, without a glance to spare for the dead man. After a moment, I followed. What Talliard’s landlady must have made of our sudden departure, and her subsequent discovery in the American lodger’s room, I did not care to ponder at that time.
Before I reached the street, Holmes had already secured a hansom. I jumped in, just as the vehicle sped off east. The ride was endless, and conversation one-sided, for Holmes declined to answer my queries, or indeed, to speak at all. Eventually, I gave over interrogation. Traffic was heavy upon the London streets at that hour, the fog was opaque, our progress was slow, and apprehension twisted my vitals.
At length, we reached the Fleet Street address of August Belknap; a surprisingly mean haunt, for it seemed that Holmes’s client, desirous of self-submersion in London’s maelstrom, had sought concealment in cheap lodgings above some barber’s shop.
The shop was still open. We rushed in, and, without pausing to consult a proprietor of remarkably demonic aspect, sprinted to the back, and up the stairs, to pound the door of August Belknap’s room.
We called him by name, and he admitted us at once. Before the first question escaped the fugitive academic’s lips, Sherlock Holmes demanded, “The photograph of your late wife, Belknap — where is it?”
Belknap stared, his feverish, astonished eyes widening. Impatiently, Holmes repeated the query, and his client’s wordless gesture encompassed the plain oak bureau in the corner. Pulling the top drawer open, my friend swiftly located and drew forth the silver-framed portrait of a round-faced young woman, irregular of feature, but sweet and grave of expression. I confess the professor was no more mystified than I. All confusion vanished, however, when Sherlock Holmes pried the backing from the frame, to reveal the flat, marvelously carven plaque secreted behind the photograph.
“Good God!” Belknap ejaculated.
His reaction was surely unfeigned. It would have required the talents of an Irving or a Forbes-Robertson to counterfeit such perfect amazement.
“You must rid yourself of this object,” Holmes informed his client. “That is your sole chance of survival.”
“Mr. Holmes, 1 knew nothing of this. I will gladly dispose of the thing. I will bury it — pulverize it — donate it to a museum — carry it back to Sumatra, if need be —”
“Useless,” Holmes returned. “Quite useless. There is but one solution to your dilemma. Your own translation of the Sumatran glyphs, Professor, should instruct you.”
“‘Nor shall pursuit abate,’” Belknap recited, “‘before the worldly waters ruled by the Relentless have closed upon that which is His.’”
“Just so. Come, there is not a moment to lose.”
Holmes exited, and we followed him down the stairs, past the flame-eyed proprietor, and out into mist-shrouded Fleet Street. He led us east, and as we went, the cold chills knifing along my spine, and the intolerable pressure of invisible regard, warned me of unseen stalkers, near at hand. August Belknap’s face was white and set; he, too, sensed the hostile presence.
We reached Ludgate Circus, and now, for the first time, I actually glimpsed the short, impossibly agile human shadows gliding through the fog, and I caught the glint of luminously malignant blue eyes. Even Sherlock Holmes could not feign total indifference. We quickened our pace, and our pursuers did likewise, drawing perceptibly nearer as we turned south toward the Thames.
I could not fathom my friend’s purpose. Neither he nor I carried a weapon. I assumed that August Belknap was similarly unarmed. Rather than seeking the comparative safety of well-peopled streets, however, Sherlock Holmes was leading us straight on toward empty Blackfriars Bridge.
We were running now, unabashedly in flight, our footsteps echoing through the fog. Hearing no clatter of pursuit, I chanced a glance behind, to descry no less than si
x of them, swift and seemingly tireless, noiseless and uncanny as predatory wraiths.
Reaching the bridge, we started to cross. Halfway to the Southwark side, however, Holmes halted abruptly, one hand raised on high. Clasped in that hand was the plaque pried from the image of the Faithful’s god. I’ve no idea at all what substance composed that small tablet. Whatever it was, it seemed to glow with some pulsing internal light of its own, and never in all my days have I seen the like. Even in the midst of the darkness, and the swirling fog, the plaque was clearly visible.
“Ur-Allazoth!” Holmes called out, in a clear, strong voice that pierced the night like a dagger.
So sharp and sudden was that utterance, and so unexpected, that I started violently at the sound of it, and beside me, I heard Belknap gasp.
“Ur-Allazoth!” Holmes repeated the call, and then sang out a string of indescribably outlandish syllables.
“Ia fhurtgn iea tlu jiadhri cthuthoth zhug’lsht.ftehia. Iea tlu.”
That is the best I can do to reproduce that fantastically incomprehensible burst of gibberish.
It seemed to me then that the inexplicable, infernal light of the stolen plaque in Holmes’s grasp responsively intensified. As a man of science, I can scarcely account for such a phenomenon, but I did not imagine it. Blinking and confused, I looked away, glancing back to behold our six pursuers, grouped at the end of the bridge, motionless and preternaturally intent. My confusion deepened as their voices rose, to wail thinly through the fog:
“Ia fhurtgn ieat tlu jiadhri cthuthoth zhugg’lsht ftehia. Iea tlu.”
There was something in the sound that roused my deepest, most elemental terror and detestation.
As the final loathsome syllable faded, Sherlock Holmes flung the plaque from Blackfriars Bridge. The lucent object fell like a shooting star. Before it struck the river below, the mists roiled, and a violent upheaval convulsed the water. The Thames shuddered, black waves smashed themselves against the piers of the bridge, and a funnel-shaped whirlpool spun into existence. Astounded, I gazed down, and thought for one mad moment to glimpse a vast and almost inconceivable shape. There was solidity there, I imagined; a slithering of boneless attenuated limbs, a flash of spikes and suckers. The moment passed. The plaque vanished into the whirlpool, the waters closed upon it, then swiftly calmed themselves. The Thames flowed on, untroubled.