Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors by William Meikle

by William Meikle

  He pointed along the bank to the south and west where a row of squat warehouses sat in dark shadow just above the high-tide mark.

  “Gatherford has holdings all along this shore,” Lestrade said. “And my snout says that he’s been seen coming and going these past few days. I think he’s holed up down here, and I mean to flush him out.”

  “Agreed,” Holmes said. “But without your men here to back us up, we must do this my way. We must be circumspect and quiet. I know that will be somewhat of a trial for you, Lestrade, but I am sure you can manage it. Now, where exactly was our man seen?”

  “Third shed along on the bank. It has his name on it, so your powers of deduction will not be needed,” Lestrade replied sarcastically, and Holmes smiled thinly. He looked over at me and I saw the smile fade and resolve set in his features.

  “Ready, Watson?”

  I put my hand on the revolver to make sure it could be easily drawn if required, and nodded.

  “Lead on, Holmes. Let us finish this madman.”

  Lestrade and I followed Holmes off the bridge and into the row of warehouses.

  3

  The ground was mud baked hard underfoot, so gauging any activity was difficult, but there was no obvious sign that much, if any, carriage traffic had been along this way in recent days. The warehouses themselves were of good quality, having been built in the last decade or so and showing no sign of the neglect or abandonment so prevalent on other stretches of the riverbank. No lights showed at any of the doors or windows, and the tall gas lamps on the street were placed at such irregular intervals that we were walking more in darkness than in light as we went along the street.

  Holmes brought us to a halt at the second building, ten yards or so to the east of our destination.

  “Lestrade—you go round the rear and stop anyone that tries to flee. Watson—just follow my lead and have your pistol handy. If you have the opportunity for a shot at Gatherford, take it.”

  We waited until Lestrade disappeared out of sight. Holmes walked up to the double door of the third warehouse and rapped hard with the head of his walking cane. The sound echoed all along the lane.

  There was no response.

  Holmes leaned on the door with his shoulder. It creaked, too loudly in the night air, and swung open several inches. Peering over Holmes’ shoulder, I could see only darkness beyond.

  Holmes put his head close to the doorjamb and sniffed at the air.

  “It is clean,” he said. “Or at least as clean as could be expected. There is no hint of putrefaction.”

  He pushed the door open further and stepped inside. I followed, taking out my pistol as I did so. Holmes had his walking cane raised as a club to fend off any sudden attack, but none came. We stepped into a quiet, empty warehouse.

  Motes of dust danced down from the rafters to waft in what little light there was from the gas lights out in the street. The place felt long disused, but there was a hint of something in the air that I could not quite place. Holmes caught it immediately. He sniffed again, like a dog inspecting a stranger’s hand.

  “Tobacco—Russian cheroots, if I am not mistaken. Be on your guard, Watson. He has been here recently—and might be here yet.”

  The warehouse seemed quite empty save for a stack of cut timber on the far side from us. I started to walk in that direction, pistol raised.

  “Careful, Watson,” Holmes said quietly. At the same moment a waft of fresher air accompanied by a shout came from the back of the warehouse.

  “Ain’t nobody here, Holmes,” Lestrade called out and strode toward us.

  “Did you secure the back door?” Holmes shouted, but Lestrade did not have time to reply. A door closed with a loud slam behind the Inspector. Holmes and I turned toward the main entrance just in time to see six men shamble through. Gatherford stood behind them in the doorway, little more than a dark silhouette. I had no possibility of taking a shot at him under these conditions.

  “Predictable, Mr. Holmes,” Gatherford said. “All I had to do was place a story in a few strategic places around town, and you have come running to investigate. I would have expected better of you.”

  “And I of you,” Holmes replied without missing a beat. “Getting dead men to do your dirty work is not the act of a gentleman.”

  “Then it is just as well that I have never had any pretensions in that regard.”

  I will give him his due: he had a remarkable ability to remain calm under Holmes’ attempts at taunting him.

  “I will leave playing at being a gentleman to you, Holmes, although we both know that we have feral hearts beating in our chests. I have merely chosen to give rein to my instincts, whereas you have smothered yours in soft comforts and bourgeoisie. I will wager I am having the more fun of the two. But I must not hog it all to myself, so I shall leave these ‘gentlemen’ with you. Perhaps they will show you how much joy can be had from the very simplest of pleasures.”

  He turned away laughing and that was the last we saw of him before he slid the double door shut.

  We heard the lock engage outside. We were left in near darkness as three words were shouted out from beyond the door in a language I did not understand. Six pairs of milk-white eyes turned their gaze to where we stood.

  The walking dead shuffled toward us.

  Chapter Eleven

  EF

  Lestrade was first to move. He stepped forward and raised his pistol. “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” he shouted, his voice ringing in the rafters.

  Normally Lestrade’s tone would have carried enough authority for the men before us to be given pause, but these six showed no signs of slowing.

  One of the attackers smiled, and it was only when they came closer still that I noticed the stitches at their lips had all been snipped—leaving them free to bite.

  “Don’t let them near you,” I called out, but Lestrade’s dander was up. He strode up to the nearest man and put his pistol against the man’s chest.

  “I said stop,” he said, and pulled the trigger. The shot man did not even emit so much as a grunt. He staggered, then stood up straight, smiling. He had a hole in him, right enough, but there was no blood, and he showed no sign of slowing.

  “To me, Lestrade!” Holmes shouted. “This needs teamwork and no little skill if we are to escape with our lives.”

  Lestrade reluctantly fell back to join us. We grouped in a tight threesome: Lestrade and I on either side of Holmes with our pistols raised; Holmes wielding his walking cane like a rapier, ready to thrust and stab at any encroaching attack. The light was so dim I could scarcely see more than my friends’ pale faces and the white eyes of the attackers coming forward through the gloom.

  We backed off slowly as the six undead came forward. They had no tactics, no subterfuge; their only policy appeared to be to reach us. I was thinking of the poor young officer who had been bitten on our last encounter. I did not relish a long stay in quarantine on my own part, never mind the possible consequences that might turn me into a shambling half-corpse should this condition indeed be infectious. I resolved to fight with every fiber of my being to avoid that fate.

  These men seemed in better health—if that was the proper word—than the ones we found in the railway carriage. They all had the gray, slightly greasy pallor of the dead, but no obvious signs of decomposition. It also, to my growing dismay, made them rather more ambulatory, and they came forward as quickly as we retreated.

  “Now would be a good time to put your plan in action, Holmes,” Lestrade said softly.

  Holmes leapt forward in a classic fencer’s move and ran his walking cane through the nearest attacker’s mouth. I saw the ferrule catch the light as it emerged through the back of the skull. Again, there was no blood and scarcely any brain material, but the man fell as if pole-axed and showed no signs of rising again.

  “Buy me some time—I think I saw something important. Aim for their heads,” Holmes said, and bent to examine the fallen figure.

  I had no time to see what
he might be doing—two of the undead were almost on me. I put a bullet in the left eye of one, and it fell away. The other made a grab for my lapel at the same instant that Lestrade fired, twice, punctuated with cursing I never knew was in his vocabulary.

  The shots echoed around us but did nothing to distract my opponent, who was now close enough for me to smell his breath—rank and malodorous, with a stench of rotting meat and something I only identified later as sulfur. He had been a small man, but stocky with it, and his face showed the pocks and scars so prevalent in the underclass of the city. His teeth were yellow, several gaps showing on the bottom jaw. The skin at his left cheek drooped, pulling down his eyelid and giving him a lopsided look as he smiled and came forward, mouth gaping, reaching for my throat. I had been so intent on studying him I had quite forgotten the danger—only for a split second, but more than long enough for my life to be in imminent peril.

  I tried to raise my revolver, and my hand slipped, turning the weapon over in my palm so that I would have to waste more time in taking aim. Fortunately for me, Holmes had noted my predicament in time to save me. He stood and dragged me bodily away backward, giving me room to raise the pistol and get another shot in. I missed the main target between the man’s eyes and instead blew away a portion of his jaw on the right side.

  He grinned lopsidedly at me and kept coming. Holmes stabbed him, hard, in the chest, resulting only in a momentary halt in his attack and a new, bloodless hole. We backed off further.

  “I need some help here,” Lestrade shouted. The Inspector was retreating away from us fast, with two undead in pursuit as he attempted to reload his revolver. His plight gave me new urgency. I jumped forward, put my pistol to the forehead of my attacker and pulled the trigger. He fell away from me, and I did not look down, not wishing to see what damage I had wrought on his skull at such close range.

  Holmes had already moved away to help Lestrade and was trying for a clear stab in with his cane even as Lestrade tripped over a fallen timber and sat down heavily on his rear end. The two attackers fell on him like ravenous dogs.

  The last of the remaining three undead was already approaching Holmes from the rear, and my friend was too intent on saving Lestrade to notice.

  Our situation had suddenly gone from bad to perilous in the extreme.

  3

  Holmes saved the day. He took the first of Lestrade’s tormentors through the back of the head with his cane, punching a hole all the way through and out the forehead. He kicked the body aside and turned in time to engage the final attacker with a blow across the forehead that would have felled a living man, but merely served to send this one staggering backward. It did, however, give me time to go to the Inspector’s aid.

  The second attacker bent to bite Lestrade’s arm but merely bit down on the barrel of my revolver just before I pulled the trigger. Once again I turned away rather than have to look at the carnage.

  Holmes danced just out of arm’s reach of his opponent, preventing it from any attack as I helped Lestrade to his feet.

  “I’ve gone over on my blasted ankle, Watson,” he grimaced through pain. ”I don’t think it’s broken, but I ain’t going to be running anywhere anytime soon.”

  I called out. “Holmes! We need to get out of here.”

  Holmes bent under a grasping arm, swiveled on his heel, and thrust his cane under the undead thing’s chin, hard enough for it to exit through the top of its head. It too fell to the ground and lay still.

  Silence fell; the only sound was Lestrade’s heavy breathing.

  “The back door, Watson,” Holmes said. “Quickly, now.”

  I took Lestrade’s weight as he hobbled toward the back of the factory. Holmes lagged somewhat behind, and when I turned to check on him it was to see him kick over a barrel and spread the wood chippings it had contained around the floor. He ripped a piece of material from the lining of his jacket, set it alight with a match, and ignited a fire in a pile of chippings. He turned away as the fire took hold and joined us in making for the door as flames started to crackle and spread.

  The door proved to be scarcely an obstacle—it yielded easily enough to a combination of Holmes’ kick and my shoulder, and we were out into the night just as a burst of heat and flame lapped at our heels. We staggered to the far side of the back alley and stood, panting with our backs to the wall for several minutes, watching as the factory we had just left was utterly consumed in flames.

  No one else came out.

  Chapter Twelve

  EF

  Mycroft was not at all pleased to see us on our somewhat bedraggled return to the Diogenes Club. He took out most of his ire on poor Lestrade.

  “Are you really so keen to spend the next two years on the night shift in Whitechapel?” he said.

  Lestrade looked to be in the mood for another fight, but restrained himself when I put a hand on his arm. Besides, Mycroft was just getting started.

  “I told you to keep clear of this case, did I not? And now we have a very public fire—not to mention the commotion at the hospital.”

  Holmes spoke up, his eyes hooded in shadow, but the set of his jaw telling me that he too was barely holding in his anger. “Hospital? You mean something happened to that poor bitten officer and you did not see fit to tell us?”

  “It is a political matter …” Mycroft began, before Lestrade could contain himself no longer.

  “I’ll give you bloody ‘political!’” he said, stepping forward with fists raised.

  Holmes stepped between the two men.

  “If he has caused harm to my man, I’ll make him pay for it,” Lestrade said to Holmes. “All the power in the land will not stop me.”

  Holmes nodded and gently pushed Lestrade away before turning. “Tell us, Mycroft. Tell us, or I am leaving and will pursue this case alone, no matter where it takes me.”

  Even then, Mycroft seemed obdurate, but Holmes held his stare the longer. Mycroft sighed and seemed to diminish as he relaxed.

  “Very well, then. But you will not like it.”

  He showed us to his armchairs and plied us with brandy and cigars before continuing. Lestrade took some convincing, but the brandy persuaded him, although it took two glasses before he calmed enough to listen to what Mycroft had to say.

  “I was going to tell you in any case,” Mycroft began. “Just not tonight.”

  He sat back in his chair and took a deep sip of his own brandy, marshalling his thoughts.

  “It happened several hours ago—so you would already have been on your way to Putney and unable to help. We have all wondered whether this … outbreak, for want of a better word, was contagious? Well now we know.

  “The boy died at five o’ clock this afternoon. He rose up out of bed and attacked the guards at the door at five-thirty.”

  3

  Of course such a statement immediately caused a great deal of consternation, not least with Lestrade, who immediately leapt to his feet again and would have headed straight for the hospital had Mycroft not stopped him.

  “There is nothing to be done. I have the whole building locked down. No one will be allowed in or out until the nature of this thing is fully uncovered and procedures are put in place for dealing with it.”

  I could only imagine what must be occurring inside the building.

  “But what of the sick?” I said, aghast at the thoughts running through my mind.

  “They will, we hope, be looked after by any survivors still inside,” Mycroft said.

  “And what if there are no survivors?”

  “Then in that case, they will have little to worry over,” Mycroft said calmly. “My duty is to the city at large, and I will do all in my power to prevent the spread of death and destruction.”

  “And tell me, brother,” Holmes said quietly. “How are your investigations proceeding? Do you know the nature of the ‘contagion’? Do you know where the instigator might be found? Do you know whether there are more railway carriages like the one we found earlier?”<
br />
  Mycroft puffed at his cigar. “These matters are all in hand. I told you—it is a political matter from this point forward.”

  Holmes smiled. “And I have told you—it is a personal matter for us now. Let us see which of us arrives at the root of it first. You must only hope that I prevail, for the wheels of your bureaucracy turn far too slowly in matters such as these. London itself might fall and the old men in Westminster will still be arguing over whose turn it is to speak. I shall report to you if I have something that merits your attention. Goodbye.”

  It seemed our visit was over, as Holmes stood and made for the door. Mycroft made no attempt to stop him, so I downed my brandy and followed with Lestrade limping at my heels.

  3

  “Where now, Holmes?” I asked as we stood outside the Diogenes Club.

  “Baker Street—I have something to attend to,” he said.

  “Then I will leave you here,” Lestrade said. “I have a family to speak to about a dead officer. Then I am heading for the hospital to see what’s what. I will send news to you if I find anything we do not yet know.”

  “Likewise,” Holmes said. “We must work together on this, Lestrade. Gatherford must be found, and fast, otherwise London may indeed be set for a fall.”

  Lestrade nodded and limped off into the night.

  We stood waiting for a chance of a carriage. Holmes ensured Lestrade was out of sight before taking something from his pocket—paper, a small tube, tightly rolled.

  “I found this in the mouth of that first dead man in the warehouse,” Holmes said. “I shall need my large glass to study it closely, but this might just be what we have been after, Watson. This might be the clue to everything.”

  We managed to catch a carriage several minutes later. Holmes was quiet on the trip back to the apartment, and once we arrived he ignored Mrs. Hudson’s attempts at ministrations and headed straight for his work desk.

  I stood at his shoulder as he painstakingly began the process of unraveling the small roll of paper, but it quickly became obvious that the task was one that would take quite some time. I adjourned to the chair by the fireside and lit a pipe, my brain being too active with memories of the day to allow any thought of sleep at that juncture.