Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual

by G. S. Denning

  The center of the study’s floor was bare. There had been a desk, but it was smashed. So smashed, in fact, that it took me a moment to realize I was looking at a bookcase, also. The two had been driven together with such force that their wreckage had become one and the plaster of the wall against which the bookcase stood had been shattered. The display cases on the walls had suffered as well. They seemed to have held a variety of exotic armaments from far-flung reaches, so the clutter at the edges of the room must have represented ten or twelve interesting and unusual ways to kill a man. Still, none of them explained the body of Eduardo Lucas.

  His face was easy to explain, for it was the face of a dead man. He wore a look of utter fear—as one might well understand. His feet and lower legs were easy to explain too, for they were merely the lower extremity of a dead man. Yet everything between his mid-thigh and the base of his neck defied reason. He’d sort of… melted. The hollow frame of his ribcage was visible through his torn shirt, but all the flesh within the middle span of his body was gone. He lay in a puddle of horrific brown slop, which—one assumed—was the remnant of his torso. Greasy strands of it still clung to the bones, giving the impression that this puddle was not what had killed the man, but rather the earthly remains of the man himself. Thankfully, it had dried somewhat—to the consistency of spilled beef stew, left in the sun for a few days.

  Except, not as appetizing.

  “I think my colleagues are unlikely to believe this was a pistol wound,” Lestrade complained. “Even worse, I would think this particular murder has a sufficient level of sensationalism to command the front pages. We had best solve it.”

  “Very well,” I said, “but I think my medical expertise will not suffice to determine cause of death. The closest thing I’ve seen is the unknown toxin from Grimesby Roylott’s syringes, but its mechanisms remain a mystery to me. Holmes, do you think you can work out what did this?”

  “Well,” said Warlock, stepping forward and withdrawing his magnifying glass from his pocket, “let us see what I can see…”

  He crouched over the unfortunate form of Eduardo Lucas, peeping first at this bit, then the next, then back to the first again. In less than a minute, he stood, straightened his sleeves and delivered his expert opinion.

  “Magic.”

  “Thank you, Holmes,” I muttered.

  Lestrade went a step further. He fixed Holmes with a look of cold fury, set his hands on his hips and demanded, “That is all? Magic? You were more useful in the past. Remember? You always used to have a prophecy when we needed one.”

  “Yes, but that was when Moriarty was trapped within him,” I reminded the stunted Romanian. “Holmes has not issued any prophecy since Moriarty left.”

  “What? Yes I have!” Holmes insisted.

  “No you haven’t,” said Lestrade, Grogsson and I.

  “How dare you? Prophecy is a gift of mine! Never of Moriarty!”

  “No. Moriarty,” we all said.

  Grogsson added, “You a liar.”

  “Oh? Oh? I’ll show you! Show you all! Then you’ll be sorry!” Holmes pouted. He threw himself into the nearest corner and began intoning, “Ohhhhhmmmmmmm! Ohhhhhhmmmmmm! Secrets-are-coming-to-meeeeeeeee! Seeeeeeeeecretssssssssss…”

  Turning from Holmes, I suggested, “Perhaps we should examine the room for clues.” There were plenty of them. The un-gooed portion of the rug upon which the body lay showed a positive flurry of footprints, made with force and haste.

  “Unless Eduardo Lucas died of over-dancing, I’d say there was a bit of a scuffle here,” I said.

  “Oooooooommmmmm… uhmmmmmmm… soon-I’ll-know-everything…”

  “Shut up, Holmes,” Lestrade suggested, leaning in to examine the scene. His skill at reading footprints was infinitely superior to mine. In only a moment he cried, “Look! This second print: the foot is small. And see this blocky imprint here? That was made by a hard, separated heel.”

  “A woman?” I asked.

  “Just so, Doctor.”

  “Yes… a woman…” said a thin, spectral voice. Grogsson gave a sudden cry of alarm and leapt sideways, as if someone had unexpectedly pinched his bottom. There stood Holmes with his arms splayed to either side, elbows bent and palms down in that unrealistic pose marionettes often adopt. His head was cocked backwards and to one side. His eyes drifted back and forth across the ceiling, as if scanning for hidden knowledge. As he spoke, a strange vapor drifted up from his mouth.

  “Wait, is he…? Did he actually do it?” Lestrade wondered aloud.

  “I know her,” Holmes mused in a willowy, unearthly tone. His head flopped to the other side and he continued, “And she knows me. She knows him and him…”

  Holmes indicated first myself, then Lucas.

  “…but not him or him…”

  Grogsson and Lestrade.

  “She wanted something so much, she killed this man to take it. She still wants it… She is looking…” Holmes’s feet began to move as if of their own accord. His head jerked this way and that as his body was yanked first one way, then another, by his wayward legs. Holmes the puppet danced his macabre minuet, reciting, “She has minions… unwitting minions who search for it… searching at her behest…”

  I’d never seen him in such a state and—my own suspicions of supernatural phenomena notwithstanding—I thrilled to see it. He seemed to be on the right track. The footprints did indicate a woman had been here, yet beyond that there seemed to be no mundane clue as to her identity. Perhaps Holmes could serve the deficiency. “Who is it, Holmes? Who is this woman?”

  “It is the Woman.”

  “All right. Yes. But that might describe half the world’s population. I don’t suppose you could narrow it down a bit, eh? Oh! Holmes! Careful! Don’t step in…”

  But it was too late. Holmes’s ethereal wandering took him directly across the crime scene. With a horrible crunch and squelch, Holmes’s foot sank through the ribcage of Eduardo Lucas and down into the muck beneath.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeahughah!” screamed Holmes. My shoulders sank—it was clear Holmes’s trance was broken.

  “Damn it, Warlock,” Lestrade complained, “you were just about to become useful.”

  “Augh! No! By the gods! My shoe! Look at my shoe! Get it off me!”

  “Gwarrr-har-har!”

  “Help! Get it off! Grogsson, help me!”

  “No! Hey! You stay back from me!”

  Holmes ran to each of us in turn, seeking aid, tracking horrid drops of Eduardo Lucas sauce all over the crime scene. We drew back. At last, he settled onto the crushed desk and peeled his shoe off with a bit of smashed wood.

  “By Jove, look what it’s done to my sock!”

  I couldn’t help but give a little grunt of laughter at Holmes’s plight. Yet something he said kept crossing my mind.

  She wanted something.

  And I thought I knew what. If Lady Hilda’s story was true, Lucas may well have spirited the Moriarty Rune to this very room, last night. Was he interrupted and murdered here? Murdered by some woman who had been seeking the rune? The room certainly seemed to reinforce that idea. The desk, the bookshelf and every display cabinet upon the walls had been smashed. Clearly, somebody had been looking for something. Somebody whose behavior showed as much penchant for force as distaste for patience.

  She still wants it.

  So she hadn’t found it. The mysterious woman had come here sure she’d find her treasure, murdered Lucas, and then failed to find what she’d been looking for. Was that because it had never been concealed in this room? Or had she simply overlooked it? Was it still here? I cast my gaze about, looking for a place the murderess had not checked. Every piece of furniture had been smashed and rifled. I could even make out a line of dust upon the floor and a corresponding change in the fade of the floorboards to show me the rug had been moved. It seemed she had checked everywhere. I circulated the room, searching, while the others saw to Holmes.

  “Grogsson! Help! It’s on my trouser
s!”

  “Gwarr-har-har!”

  “Get my trousers off!”

  “No!”

  “Well then, bring me something to wipe it up with, won’t you?”

  With a shrug, Grogsson stepped to the middle of the room and grabbed a clean corner of the rug on which the corpse lay. He picked it up, clearly intending to drag it over to Holmes and use the corner to mop up some of the slop. As he lifted the rug, I saw a stain upon the floorboards. The Lucas-goop had seeped through the rug, leaving a second stain that exactly corresponded with the first.

  “No! Put that down, you great fool,” Lestrade cried. “We must not disturb the scene!”

  A bit late for that, I thought, looking over Warlock’s gooey footprints and discarded clothing. Suddenly a thought struck me.

  “Wait! Grogsson! The rug! We must move it! Help me shift it, won’t you?”

  “Do not encourage him, Doctor,” Lestrade complained. “I’ve been trying to break him of this habit for some time now.”

  “But see here,” I said. “Holmes says the murderess is still looking for the thing she sought in this room, yes?”

  “So?” asked Lestrade.

  “The rug has been moved!”

  “At the risk of repeating myself,” said Lestrade, “so?”

  “The faded square on the floorboards does not match the current position of the rug, but the stain underneath does! Don’t you see? If she had moved the rug while searching, the stain would be different. It would at least be larger than the stain upon the rug. Smudged. But it isn’t. The rug was moved before Lucas met his death.”

  Holmes, Lestrade and Grogsson turned to look at me, searchingly, then with one voice they all said, “So?”

  “So, if our mystery woman did not move it after killing Lucas, someone moved it before! Who? We know the murderess believed the rune to be hidden somewhere in this room, otherwise why would she have searched it so rigorously? But what if Lucas had a few moments in the room, before she got here? He moved the rug! Just before he was slain, he hid something under that rug!”

  Lestrade gave a sigh of consternation, but eventually nodded. Apparently, my previous help had earned me just enough cachet to allow the shifting of one crime-scene rug.

  “All right, you big oaf,” he hissed at Grogsson. “Lend a hand. We’ll put it over by the fireplace.”

  The three of us picked up the rug and carried the mortal remains of Eduardo Lucas to one side of the room. As soon as it was disturbed, the brown sauce proved to be only semi-solidified. Though the top had dried, the lower layer was still liquid—a liquid that seemed overjoyed to spill from the carpet and slop all over the floor. It was difficult not to gag.

  Having moved the body clear, we all returned to examine the floor at the center of the room and eagerly beheld…

  Nothing.

  Search as we might, no trace could be found of the Moriarty Rune. It had not been simply thrust under the rug. Nor was it stuck to the bottom. I checked—an act that nearly cost me my breakfast and the better part of my stomach lining. Where the rug had been, we found no trace of any hatch or compartment.

  “Well,” said Lestrade, gazing around the slop-sloshed ruins of his crime scene, “I suppose we will have some explaining to do to the commissioner. A pity Dr. Watson’s instincts have failed him, this time.”

  But Holmes said, “No…”

  He stood by the wreckage of the desk. He had only one shoe on, and one sock. He had borrowed Grogsson’s straight razor to clumsily hack away at the befouled leg; his trousers were in ruins. On his face was a dreamy look— just a hint of the trancelike state he’d been in earlier.

  “…I think Watson may be right.”

  His left hand drifted up from his side. He held it open and stared down at his palm, as if curious. Suddenly, he snapped it shut and, with a wrenching squeal, all the floorboards in the center of the room withered and bent. Grogsson roared his approval. Lestrade cried out, “Oh, come now! How am I to explain that?”

  “But wait!” I said. “What is this?”

  In the center of the wreckage lay a small section of floor that had not succumbed to Holmes’s spell. It was irregular, its shape defined only by where a few of the smaller boards began and ended. Wading through the twisted wooden waste, I grasped this section and drew it up. Beneath was a small compartment, hardly a foot deep, two feet long and some few inches across. Within lay nearly a dozen documents (which proved to contain government secrets of a most salacious nature) and, much to my delight, the same battered attaché case Annie Harrison had taken from her fallen brother. Drawing the case out of its sanctum, I learned that my earlier suspicions had indeed been correct. Its sides were constructed not of leather, but of dull and dented lead. Yet, despite its weight, I could just feel the soft flutter of something moving within. Something alive.

  “Holmes,” I whispered, “I think it’s him! Moriarty!”

  “Well, open it up. Let’s have a look.”

  “But… won’t he get out?”

  “You may be right, Watson. Just the corner, then.”

  We all drew close. Flipping one of the catches, I drew the strap loose and bent up the corner of one side of the flap. Through the crack we could make out the irregular flickering of the tiny blue flame of the Moriarty Rune.

  “Ha!” Holmes exclaimed. “We’ve got him! My great enemy! Not so scary now, are you, Jimmy?”

  “You unner arrest,” said Grogsson, pointing at the case.

  “I don’t know how much good that would do, Torg,” said Lestrade. “The courts are not in the habit of trying little bits of fire.”

  “Then what should we do with him?” I asked.

  “He must be destroyed,” said Holmes.

  “How?”

  “Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? For now, Watson, I think we’d best get him safely back to 221B.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere,” said Lestrade. “There are a dozen constables outside and the commissioner is on his way. When they see what we have done to the crime scene, well… Holmes, Lestrade and Grogsson all in one room, with the suspicion of guilt upon them? It’s all Scotland Yard has been hoping for. I should think we’ll be arrested for the murder of Eduardo Lucas. The judge will find a way to make himself believe it. Then we’ll be hanged. It’s no more than we deserve.”

  “Lestrade, you ought to adopt a puppy. Quickly, before you become just insufferable,” I told him. “As it so happens, I once had to use a lie against Mrs. Hudson which will, I think, prove itself serviceable again.”

  Three minutes later, I found myself standing on the doorstep of 16 Godolphin Street, chiding a dozen constables and the recently arrived police commissioner. “Gentlemen, you say this is a case of murder? Why would you think so? Is there a pistol wound? The mark of a knife? Inspector Lestrade, at least, has had the wisdom to consider other possibilities. He has summoned me—Dr. John Watson, of Baker Street—to perform the Heinzwald-Gershwitzerbarden test.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of that test,” said Holmes, exactly as we had coached him. “Isn’t it rather destructive to the surroundings where it is conducted?”

  “It is,” I faux-admitted. “Yet the results are conclusive. Gentlemen, I can confidently state that Mr. Eduardo Lucas was not felled by murder, as you are all too willing to believe, but that he instead succumbed to that dread disease, Indo-Brazilian super-gonorrhea! If you love your country, gentlemen, if you value the peace, you will cease conjuring imagined murders and devote your efforts to combating the real threat. The wolf is at your door! Disaster looms! Stay vigilant! Be particularly on your guard against French chorus girls! That is all. Good day. Goodbye. No questions, please.”

  The local lawmen being suitably impressed, we made our way down the street—Holmes in his bare feet with one trouser leg hacked away, Grogsson with the little leaden case tucked into the inner pocket of his overcoat. All seemed right until we arrived at Baker Street. Even as we prepared to mount the steps to our ho
me, we were met by Mrs. Hudson as she escorted a pair of disappointed visitors out.

  “Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope, to see Mr. Holmes,” Mrs. Hudson announced.

  It was clear, concise and polite—by far her finest introduction of the day—yet I could not stop myself spluttering, “No it isn’t.”

  The lady upon the steps had no resemblance to our earlier guest. True, she was well dressed, but she was older, plainer, more severe, and utterly devoid of the oh-save-me-I-am-a-thrilling-rich-attractive-woman-who-needs-your-help aspect of character that had so charmed me earlier that morning. She was accompanied by a pinch-faced butler, so austere and haughty that even I was taken aback by his extreme Britishness.

  “Excuse me, but I certainly am Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope!” she said huffily. Her aristocratic aspect of superiority had suffered somewhat from the shock of having Grogsson wedged into the staircase right in front of her, but it was nevertheless unmistakable. “I have come to discuss a matter of utmost import and delicacy.”

  “We may know something of it already,” I muttered.

  This second version of Lady Hilda stiffened even more and declared, “My words are for the ears of Mr. Holmes only! Oh, and maybe that hanger-on lad I hear he employs. Word has it, he is occasionally useful.”

  “I strive to serve,” said I, then turned back to my party and suggested, “Lestrade, Grogsson, perhaps we had best catch up with you later. Torg, I don’t suppose you’d mind lending me your coat and its… contents?”

  He scowled at me and grumbled, “No. Torg will stay and talk with pretty lady.”

  “By God, you shall not! Give me that coat, this instant! Now, get out! Off with you! Lestrade, get him clear, won’t you? Holmes and I will find you later.”

  As soon as I had the Moriarty Rune and was relatively sure that Grogsson was not going to come bashing into our sitting room and propose marriage to Lady Hilda, Holmes and I settled in with the morning’s second damsel in distress to hear almost exactly the same story. This woman claimed the same identity as our first guest, told of the same blackmail threat by the same Eduardo Lucas, worried of the same exposure of her same treasonous misdeed, expressed the same admiration of the posterior aspect of the same tennis instructor and enjoined us to eradicate all the consequences of her poor personal decisions, just as our earlier guest had.