Shadows over Baker Street

by John Pelan;Michael Reaves

  “Well, it’s typical of Lestrade not to have done a more thorough job, I suppose.”

  Again, Holmes shook his head. “On the contrary. On this occasion, I think the inspector performed his office excellently. The felon was arrested within a day of committing his atrocity, and a watertight prosecution case was presented.”

  “Yes, but as you said . . .”

  “Ah!” Holmes half smiled. “I don’t think Freudian psychoanalysis is really Scotland Yard’s field just at the moment, Watson . . . though maybe we should make it ours. What do you make of the rumors that Jobson belonged to some kind of cult or sect?”

  “I honestly wouldn’t know.”

  Holmes pondered. “The mentality of the cultist is often the hardest to understand. Still”—and he took out his watch and saw that it read two minutes past nine—“that’s one cultist we needn’t worry about any longer.”

  Holmes spent much of the rest of that day engrossed in the puzzle. When he wasn’t taking measurements of its lines and making odd calculations, he was at the lab table setting up chemical tests on the paper and the ink. No conclusion of value was drawn.

  “Isn’t it possible that Jobson was simply trying to inconvenience you?” Watson wondered. “Setting you a meaningless and insoluble problem in order to frustrate you?”

  Holmes considered as he gazed down on Baker Street and puffed on his pipe. “But why should he? I never had any contact with the man.”

  “This forthcoming calamity he spoke about. Perhaps he was just trying to cause a panic . . . his last revenge against society, so to speak?”

  Again Holmes thought about this, but shook his head. “In which case he should have gone to the newspapers. Of all people, he must have known that I was the least likely to spread it around.”

  “Well, it confounds me,” Watson admitted, getting back to the Times.

  “And me.” Holmes lifted the slip of paper from his desk, looked it over one last time, then folded it and slid it into his jacket pocket. “Perhaps we should approach this from a different angle. Come, we’re off to Southwark.”

  “Southwark?”

  “Jobson lived on Pickle Herring Street. I saw it in the trial transcripts. It wasn’t an address I was likely to forget.”

  Pickle Herring Street ran alongside that bustling reach of the Thames known as the Pool of London. It was hemmed in on its north side by a dense forest of sails, masts, and rigging, which extended all the way from Cotton’s Wharf to the immense new construction that was Tower Bridge. Little of the grandeur of that marvel of engineering filtered down into the shadowy recesses below it, however. At this point, Pickle Herring Street, which stank somewhat appropriately of whelks, shrimps, and strongly salted fish, gave out to a series of narrow, straw-matted passages, winding off into a gloomy warren of ale shops and dingy lodging houses.

  In one of these alleyways, a squalid, rat-infested place, Holmes and Watson found the former habitation of Harold Jobson. It was little more than a lean-to shelter, its broken windows patched up with rags, its single inner room now open to the elements, the door having been torn from its hinges, and anything of value within long ago pillaged.

  “I don’t understand,” said Watson as they stared into the dank interior. “Jobson was educated. He boasted of his comfortable family background. How did he descend to this?”

  Holmes pursed his lips. “Who can say? The pressure of living sometimes becomes too much for a man . . . he simply drops out of society. Then there is the cult factor. I’ve heard of such things before. Acolytes are so mesmerized by their new calling that they surrender everything they have. Either way, Watson, I doubt there’s anything of use to us here.”

  They made their way back by what seemed to Watson a circuitous route, Holmes taking each left-hand turn as they came to it. A few moments later, perhaps inevitably, they were covering ground they’d already covered before.

  “You realize we’ve just come ’round in a wide circle?” Watson ventured.

  “I do,” Holmes replied quietly. “Do you think the fellow behind us does?”

  “Behind us . . .”

  “I’d rather you didn’t look ’round.”

  They continued to stroll, but Watson was puzzled. These riverside cut-throughs were thronging with laborers of every sort; riggers, ballast heavers, coal whippers, lightermen, all hurrying back and forth. How his friend had managed to pick one out as a potential foe was beyond him.

  “The one with the loose nail in his shoe,” Holmes added by way of explanation. “It keeps clicking on the cobbles, and it has been doing so for some time.”

  Watson concentrated, and now indeed he did hear a faint and regular clicking amid the clatter and din of the docks. “Surely he wouldn’t have come in a circle, too, unless he was following us?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Holmes, rounding a corner and abruptly stepping into a narrow ginnel, dragging Watson with him.

  A moment later, they’d moved through it into a derelict hovel, where they waited. Seconds passed, then there was a hurried pattering of feet as someone came urgently into the ginnel behind them. Clearly, the stalker was anxious for his prey not to elude him. The feet went on past the entrance to the hovel, the loose nail clicking all the way, then halted and backtracked. The owner of the feet, a burly, brutish-looking fellow in a shabby three-piece suit, with a dirty bowler hat pulled down on his broad, fat head, came warily in. He froze when he felt the muzzle of Watson’s revolver against his lower back.

  “That’s far enough, sir,” said the doctor.

  The man made a sharp move toward his jacket pocket, but Holmes stepped smartly up to him. “Keep your hands where we can see them, if you please.”

  “What is this?” the man asked, his accent pure Bow. “You trying to rob me or something?”

  “We might ask you the same question,” said Watson.

  “Then again we might not,” Holmes added. “I doubt a common thief would be so careless as to follow his intended prey for several minutes along public thoroughfares when he has all these alleys and doorways to skulk in. So tell us, who are you?”

  The fellow grinned, showing yellow, feral teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  Holmes eyed him, recognizing the stubborn surliness of the foot soldier rather than the officer in command. “What’s your connection with Harold Jobson?” he asked.

  At this, there was a sudden nervous look about the fellow. “Jobson?” he said. “Dunno him. Never ’eard of him.”

  “If you’ve never heard of him, why are you trembling?”

  “I never ’eard of him, I tell ya!” the fellow suddenly bellowed, driving one hamlike elbow backward, catching Watson hard in the midriff. Winded, the doctor gasped and twisted in pain. He managed to hang on to the collar of the man’s jacket, but dropped his revolver. Holmes went down to retrieve the weapon, in which time, their captive made his escape, hurling himself sideways, tearing free of his jacket and scrambling out through the door and away along the ginnel.

  Watson made to follow, but Holmes bade him stay where he was and get his breath back. There was no sense in making a scene, he said; after all, the fellow could complain that he’d done nothing wrong but that they had waylaid him at gunpoint . . . and he’d be telling the truth. Watson groaned and rubbed at his chest. “That chap’s plainly frightened of something,” he observed.

  Holmes nodded as he rifled the pockets of the discarded jacket. “Yes, and whatever it is . . . he was more frightened of that than he was of your trusty Webley.”

  He made a thorough search of the garment, but found only one or two items of interest: a particularly nasty lock knife, its blade at least six inches long and honed to razor sharpness, its hinge well oiled so the weapon could be drawn and flicked open at a moment’s notice; and a small, leather-bound notebook, with two entries in it. Both were written in pencil, in a spidery hand. They read:

  Randolph Daker, 14 Commercial Road

  Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker
Street

  Watson was shocked. “Good grief. The cad’s been onto you all day.”

  Holmes nodded. “Not just me, though. Randolph Daker of Commercial Road . . . anyone we know?”

  Watson shook his head. “I doubt it. Commercial Road’s up in the East End.”

  “Perhaps we should pay it a visit?”

  “Good Lord . . . I thought this neighborhood was dangerous.”

  That afternoon they took a cab to the City, then proceeded on foot through the teeming slums of Cheapside and Whitechapel. Both men were already familiar with this neighborhood; it wasn’t ten years since the so-called Ripper had terrorized these hungry, crowded streets. The shocking depredations had brought the crime and squalor in the district to worldwide attention, but little, it seemed, had changed. The roadways were still filthy with mud and animal dung, the entries still cluttered with rubbish. The housing was of the poorest stock: sooty brown-brick tenements, damp, dismal, decaying, leaning against one another for mutual support. The inhabitants, and there were a great many of them—families vastly outnumbered dwellings in this part of London—were exclusively of the gaunt and needy variety. More often than not, rags passed for clothes, and beggary and drunkenness were the day’s chief occupations.

  “It’s an absolute disgrace,” Watson muttered. “I’d have thought the Housing of the Working Classes Act would have resolved all this.”

  Holmes shook his head. “Goodly intentions are no use without goodly sums of money, Watson. The property tax doesn’t provide funds even remotely sufficient to ease this level of degradation.”

  Saddened by what they saw, but, inevitably, more concerned with the job at hand, they pressed on, and an hour later, entered Commercial Road. Number 14 was a tall, narrow, terraced house, set back behind a fenced-off garden, now straggling and overgrown. The house’s lower windows bore no glass, but had boards nailed across them. Only jagged shards were visible in the upper windows.

  “It looks derelict,” said Watson.

  “It may look derelict, but someone’s been in and out recently,” Holmes replied. He indicated a path leading from the gate to the front door. It was unpaved, but had been beaten through the undergrowth by the regular passage of feet. Several stems of weeds were freshly broken.

  They approached the door, which they noticed was standing ajar by a couple of inches. Holmes pushed it open. Beyond, the house was filled with shadow. A nauseating odor, like fish oil or stagnant brine, flowed out.

  The detective raised his voice: “Would Mr. Randolph Daker be at home?”

  There was no reply. Holmes glanced at Watson, shrugged, and went in. The interior of the building was unimaginably filthy. A litter of rotten food, abandoned clothes, and broken furniture strewed every floorway. The wallpaper, what little there was left of it, hung in torn-down strips; here and there, there were smeared green handprints on it. The smell intensified the farther in they ventured. “Hello?” Watson called again. Still, nobody answered.

  At length, they found themselves in what might once have passed for a sitting room. It was cluttered with the same foul wreckage as the rest of the house. Watson was about to call out a third time when Holmes stopped him. The doctor could immediately tell that his friend’s catlike senses had alerted him to something. A tense second passed, then there came a faint shuffle from somewhere close by. An object fell over. There was a grunt, brutish and animalistic . . . and a figure came shambling into view from the doorway connecting to the kitchen and scullery.

  It wore a cheap, ill-fitted suit, which had burst at many of its seams. Tendrils of what at first looked like seaweed protruded through them. The same vile matter hung from the figure’s hands and face, and now, as it lurched slowly into the open, it was clear that this was not part of any disguise. Whoever the wretched creature might once have been, his head was now a bloated mass of barnacles and marine-type growths. Vitreous, octopus-like eyes rolled amid thick folds of polyp-ridden flesh. Warty lips hung open on a bottomless, fishlike mouth.

  Holmes and Watson could only stand stock-still, gazing at the apparition. It tried to speak to them, but only meaningless blubberings came out. Recognizing its inability to communicate, it gave a sharp, keening squeal, then lumbered forward, deformed hands outstretched. It was almost upon them when Watson came to himself. “Back, Holmes, back! Don’t let it touch you!”

  The two friends retreated, and unable to reach them, the monstrosity, which suddenly seemed to be ailing, slumped down to its knees, then fell forward onto its face. Its shoulders heaved three times as it struggled to breathe, then it lay still.

  A stunned silence followed, finally broken by Holmes: “Randolph Daker, esquire, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

  Watson knelt beside the body and pulled his gloves on. He was still reluctant to touch the thing, even with his hands protected.

  “Have you ever seen the like of this before?” the detective asked him.

  The doctor shook his head. “Some kind of fungal infection, but . . . it’s so advanced.”

  “Is he dead?”

  Watson nodded. “He is now.” He glanced up. “What on earth is going on here?”

  “We must root around,” Holmes replied. “Uncover anything we can that links this fellow Daker with Harold Jobson.”

  They began to search the premises, and immediately saw through the scullery window that the house’s rear yard had been adapted into a makeshift stable. A flimsy plank roof had been set up. Below it, up to its fetlocks in dung and dirty straw, stood a thin, bedraggled horse.

  “Daker was a carter,” said Watson.

  “In which case, he must have kept records,” Holmes replied. “Keep searching.”

  Within moments, Watson had found a wad of dockets held together by a bulldog clip. “Receipts,” he said.

  Holmes came over to him. “Find the most recent one.”

  Watson leafed through them. The faint writing, poorly scribbled in pencil, was just about legible. “The last job he did was on April twenty-second, when he was to ‘collect sundry items for Mr. Rohampton’ . . . Tibbut’s Wharf, Wapping.”

  Holmes was already making for the door. “Not twenty minutes from here. Most convenient.”

  “Oh yes . . . now I remember,” said the pier master at Tibbut’s Wharf, a bearded giant in an old seaman’s cap. “That was the American chap, wasn’t it?”

  “American?” said Holmes with interest.

  The pier master nodded, then tapped his fingers on his desk. “Mr. Rohampton. He came in himself and made the booking. There were several crates and three passengers. They arrived on the morning tide on April twenty-second, on the Lucy Dark, a private charter from . . .” His memory faded. “Now, where was it . . . place called Innsmouth, I think? Does that ring a bell?”

  “Innsmouth, Massachusetts?” Holmes asked.

  “No, no, no.” The bearded chap shook his head. “Innsmouth, America.”

  “I see. Well, your powers of recall do you credit.”

  The pier master leaned back on his stool. “I couldn’t very well forget it. The passengers were all parceled up in bandages. Head to foot, they were. I assume this bloke Rohampton’s a doctor of some sort, and these were his patients?”

  “Very possibly,” Holmes replied. “What else can you tell us about him.”

  “If you’ll wait one moment . . .” The pier master opened a register and ran a thick-nailed finger down his various lists. “I think I’ve got a business address for him.”

  Burlington Mews was a side street off Aldgate. Though it was part of the moneyed business district, much of the property down there was currently “to let.” Only one unit was in fact occupied; Rohampton’s Tea & Ginger. For a quaint-sounding company, its windows were partially shuttered, its decayed frontage smothered in grime. Only dusty blackness lay beyond its mullioned panes.

  Holmes made to enter straightaway, but Watson held him back. “I say . . . aren’t we rushing into this, rather?”

  Holmes considere
d. “Jobson said we have two or three days . . . at the most. We’ve already dithered for the better part of one day. I think it’s best if we press on as hard as we can.”

  “Holmes?” Watson said. “Is everything all right? You seem . . . anxious.”

  Again, the detective considered. It was one of those very rare moments when he appeared to be at a loss for words. “I’ve always, as you know, Watson, been a firm believer that every event has its cause and effect . . . is explicable, no matter how bizarre the circumstance, in scientific terms.”

  Watson nodded.

  Holmes regarded him gravely. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t worlds of strangeness that you and I have yet to encounter.” And he went inside.

  More curious now than ever, Watson followed.

  It was a small suite of offices, paneled in drab, dark wood, and extremely cramped. Even though the May day without was fine and bright, little sunlight filtered inside. No candles burned, no flames flickered in the grate. As well as the pervading gloom, there was also a distinct chill, an air of dankness. For all that, Burgess, the clerk who attended the visitors, seemed perfectly at ease in the environment. He was a short but thickset man, with only a few strands of hair combed over his otherwise bald pate, and a smug look on his pale, rough-cut face. When he approached, he did so with a pronounced limp; one of his legs appeared to be much sturdier than the other.

  Holmes introduced himself, then offered a gloved hand. The clerk shook it. The detective at once took note of the fellow’s fingers. They were coarse and callused, the nails broken and dirty. The one thing that didn’t besmear them, however, was ink. Neither, Holmes noted, were there any ink stains on the blotter on the clerk’s desk, nor any writing on the ledger that was open there. While the clerk lumbered off to find his employer, the detective glanced farther afield. It didn’t surprise him to observe a fine sheen of dust covering the nearby wall of book spines, and strands of unbroken cobweb over the shelves where the stationery was stored.