Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual

by G. S. Denning

  “‘But why?’ said I. I know a thing like red hair is more apt to make one the subject of fun than to work any great benefit. I don’t know if you gentlemen noticed, but I’ve got red hair myself!”

  “Yes,” said Watson. “We’d noticed.”

  “But Vincent was in earnest. ‘Look here,’ he says, waving this paper at me, ‘there’s another vacancy in the League of Red-Headed Men! Oh, that’s easy money, sir. If only my hair were red!’

  “Well I was rather interested, as you can well imagine. So I asked Vincent to tell me what this strange league was. It seems there was this Londoner—Mr. Ezekiah Hopkins— who moved to America and became a billionaire—”

  “A billionaire? Billion with a ‘b’?” Watson interrupted, interruptfully. “There’s no such thing.”

  “Ezekiah Hopkins was one,” Mr. Wilson protested, “and when he died, he laid aside his fortune for the preservation and furtherment of red-headed men. Very sensible of him, I thought. Turns out this League of Red-Headed Men is some sort of money-distribution club. You’ve got to be a grown man, an Englishman, and have really the reddest shade of hair. Not orange, not chestnut, not ginger, but real, vivid red! Which, I do! Well, I pointed that out to Spaulding and he jumped up and said, ‘By Jove! That’s right! I hadn’t thought of it, but you do! But then… maybe it’s not worth it for you to put yourself out of your way, sir. It’s only a couple of hundred a year.’

  “Well, the shop’s near enough in its death throes that a couple of hundred a year would be most welcome. So I asked Vincent to show me the article and he laid down this.”

  Mr. Wilson reached into his hat, pulled forth a wrinkled newspaper clipping and laid it on the table before us. It read:

  Be it known that the late Mr. Ezekiah Hopkins announces one vacancy on the League of Red-Headed Men. Wage: £4 a week. Duties: nominal. Only the most red-headed, full-grown Englishmen need present themselves. Reply 11 a.m., today. 7 Pope’s Court, Fleet Street.

  Watson read the article once. Then he read it again. Then his lip began to quiver. In no time at all, he was hunched forward with his hands on his knees, laughing with all his might. I started too. We laughed. We laughed and laughed. Mr. Wilson harrumphed at us, but we laughed and laughed and laughed.

  “Really,” Watson said. “This is too much!”

  “I know!” I agreed. “Pope’s Court? Why, a thing ought to be either religious or judicial, not both! What an obvious conflict of interest! Right? Ha, ha, ha!”

  “What? No, Holmes. The situation. Think of it: a mysterious worker shows up, agrees to work for half-wages and then only a few weeks later, he just happens to mention this ridiculous opportunity. It has every indication of a confidence trick. If you’ve any doubt of it, Holmes, consider: Vincent Spaulding has a photography habit. Film is made with silver halides. Silver isn’t cheap, Holmes. It’s hardly the sort of thing a half-waged pawnbroker’s assistant can go snap, snap, snapping away with. No, I will promise you there is more to Mr. Spaulding than first meets the eye.”

  “Oh? Well, perhaps there is,” I conceded. “But Pope’s Court is still funny.”

  “I am not convinced that any of this is humorous!” Mr. Wilson blurged. (“Blurged” is a word I just made up. It means “screamed out in a high-pitched, unmanly sort of indignation that left little doubt that the speaker was stupid”.) “My new livelihood hangs in the balance and if you gentlemen can find nothing better to do than laugh at me, I will bid you good day!”

  Watson’s eyes twinkled with eagerness. “Am I to understand that you answered this advertisement, Mr. Wilson?”

  “Well, I wasn’t the only one. By God, you should have seen Pope’s Court! So many red-heads standing about that when the wind blew, it looked like Fleet Street was on fire! There were not a few red-headed gentlemen who had showed up in the misguided hope that maybe Scotland was English enough to qualify. Oh, and one or two freckle-faced red-head ‘lads’ who had borrowed work-shirts and bracers and rather hoped that nobody would notice an extra curve or two beneath. But Spaulding got me through. He shoved. He kicked. He cajoled. He got me to the front of that line, marched me into Number 7 and announced, ‘This is Mr. Jabez Wilson and he has agreed to fill your vacancy.’

  “Behind a desk was a man with hair very nearly as red as mine. As soon as he saw me, he rose to his feet, shoved aside the rather cinnamon-headed fellow he’d been talking to and said, ‘It is a pleasure to know you, Mr. Wilson. I am Duncan Ross and you must forgive me an obvious precaution.’

  “With that, he sprang upon me, laid both hands to my hair and pulled with all his might. Well, I cried out at the treatment, and… if I am honest… there may have been a few tears in my eyes. Of indignation, I am sure.”

  “Of course. Indignation,” I agreed. I like to help people think well of themselves.

  “At last he was satisfied. He came away, shook my hand and said, ‘You will pardon me, I’m sure. We have twice been deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler’s wax which would disgust you with human nature. By the Lord above, though, what a head you’ve got! Magnificent! Magnificent! I’m sorry, everybody, but the vacancy is filled!’ He ran to the window and shouted as much to all the hopefuls below. The entire street gave a moan of disappointment and the orange flood receded.

  “‘Well, here now,’ I protested, ‘I don’t know the work yet, do I? I don’t know the hours or the conditions or what you folks call nominal duties. What’s it all about?’

  “But Mr. Ross waved my concerns aside and said, ‘Ha! When you hear how easy it truly is, I think there shall be no difficulty. Why, there’s never been a red-head yet that left us! You must present yourself at ten a.m. every day. Here you shall stay until two in the afternoon. As for the nominal duties: you shall copy out the Encyclopedia Britannica. At the end of each week, I shall present you with four pounds. Now, the only difficult part, Mr. Wilson, is the rigidity of the hours. You must not, under any circumstance, leave this office during your regular hours. To do so is to forsake the founder—the late, lamented Ezekiah Hopkins—and to forfeit your position here, forever! There! How’s that?’

  “I needn’t tell you gentlemen, it suited me quite well. The… uhhhh… the money was welcome. The duty suited me—I’ve always been proud of my penmanship—and since a pawnbroker’s trade is mostly of an evening, I lost little by spending my time so. Spaulding has been good enough to look after the shop in the hours of my absence and he does just a fine job… uhhhh… I assume.”

  Here Watson asked, “Are we to believe, Mr. Wilson, that you have been spending four hours a day for the last eight weeks, copying the Encyclopedia Britannica?”

  “It’s not a very good encyclopedia,” Mr. Wilson replied.

  I could see Watson getting all I’m-upset-because-I-am-British-and-it-is-British-and-everything-British-is-the-best, but he contained himself and commented only, “And Mr. Duncan Ross has been paying you for this service? Four pounds per week?”

  “Regular as you like,” Mr. Wilson said. “That first day he got me settled in the office with the letter ‘A’ volume. I had a little desk, in a little room, with a picture of Ezekiah Hopkins on the wall and a window that lets in enough light for me to copy by. Mr. Ross came in a few times that first day, to see how I was getting on and remind me I must not leave. But as the days went on, he came less and less. Now he only comes by on Saturdays to give me my four pounds. But I still don’t dare leave, you know. Uhhhh… No, no, no, I wouldn’t do a thing to endanger my position in the league. But now—oh, now—I fear it is gone! I went in this morning to fulfill my duty, and what should I find? The door was locked. And see what was tacked upon it?”

  Mr. Wilson reached into his hat a second time and came up with a sheet of plain paper with the handwritten message:

  THE LEAGUE OF RED-HEADED MEN IS HEREBY SUSPENDED, BY ORDER OF THE LATE, LAMENTED EZEKIAH HOPKINS.

  MR. WILSON MAY REPORT TO HIS OWN CELLAR THIS SATURDAY NIGHT AT 8 P.M. TO RECEIVE T
HE FINAL PAYMENT FOR ALL HIS VALUED LABORS.

  DO NOT ENTER THE CELLAR BEFORE 8 P.M.!

  “What do you gentlemen make of it? Whatever shall I do?” Jabez Wilson wondered, stupidly.

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Watson? Isn’t it distracting?” I urged.

  Watson raised his eyebrows at both of us and said, “One thing you must clearly not do, Mr. Wilson, is accept this rather suspicious invitation to your own cellar!”

  “But… but… uhhhh… I don’t want to lose my connection with the league! They can’t leave me like this! They’ve no right! That’s two hundred a year I’ll lose!”

  “I think you stand to lose a great deal more than that, Mr. Wilson,” Watson scolded. “I can see no great injury that’s been done to you, thus far. Indeed, if all ties were severed between yourself and the League of Red-Headed Men, you are thirty-two pounds to the good, have had ample opportunity to polish that penmanship you’re so proud of, and have gained a literally encyclopedic knowledge of several subjects beginning with the letter ‘A’. Now again, I repeat: do not report to your cellar this Saturday at eight o’clock! I can think of no other motivation behind the strange actions of this League of Red-Headed Men save that of ensuring your shop is unguarded between the hours of ten and two. What have they been up to? What project have they been at that has required such an extraordinarily long time? And at such expense! You may trust to it, Mr. Wilson: this league is up to some mischief!”

  “But… uhhh… what exactly?”

  Watson sighed heavily, gave me a little squished-brow look that meant he knew he’d just been outmaneuvered and muttered, “Don’t worry. Holmes and I shall investigate.”

  “Good idea, Watson! Where shall we go? The league’s office? Jabez’s cellar? Should we go now? Let’s go now!”

  “I’m afraid I have another engagement this afternoon,” Watson said.

  “But… Watsooooooooon! We should go now!”

  “Why don’t you go, Holmes? Have Mr. Wilson take you around to the league’s office and see if you can learn anything there, eh?”

  “But… uhhhh… it’s locked up,” Mr. Wilson reminded us.

  “I assume there is a landlord, is there not? Do you suppose he might have a key? Do you suppose he might have seen you once or twice in your hundred-or-so trips up and down his stairs, Mr. Wilson? Perhaps he might be persuaded that you have left your pen up there and need to collect it. That’s a good enough course for this afternoon’s adventure, isn’t it?”

  I will now pause to admit—and it hurts my feelings, dear reader, to write it—that Watson did not hold my investigative acumen in very high regard. As I set out with Mr. Jabez Wilson that afternoon, I had the distinct feeling that the only reason Watson had trusted me to go without him was that he was already certain we would find nothing of interest.

  Which proved to be the case.

  Once the landlord had admitted us to the office, I found nothing out of the ordinary except an illustrated calendar hanging on one wall. It featured a picture of a lady in her bloomers, chasing a little dog up the street. He had a hairbrush in his mouth. I assumed it belonged to the bloomer-lady, but couldn’t be certain.

  Also, there was this portrait of Ezekiah Hopkins on the wall behind the desk. He had a top hat, a bush of red hair sticking out from under it, a monocle and a severe expression as if he were watching the man who sat at that desk with a judgmental eye. Speaking of eyes, both of the portrait’s eyes were burning embers that perpetually oozed an oily purple smoke up towards the ceiling. Jabez said it had always done that. On his first day, Mr. Ross had assured him it was some sort of trick, done with cigarettes.

  Which was very clever, I thought.

  Oh, and I saw the encyclopedia Mr. Wilson had been made to copy. And do you know something? Every entry was the same!

  A.I the red-headed man pledge to the red-headed master: we shall be parted no longer. Apart, we are lonely. Together, we are whole. We shall be whole. Together. Always. Always together. This I scribe. This I pledge.

  AACHEN.I the red-headed man pledge to the redheaded master: we shall be parted no longer. Apart, we are lonely. Together, we are whole. We shall be whole. Together. Always. Always together. This I scribe. This I pledge.

  AARDVARK.I the red-headed man pledge to the red-headed master: we shall be parted no longer. Apart, we are lonely. Together, we are whole. We shall be whole. Together. Always. Always together. This I scribe. This I pledge.

  “Hmm…” I said, leafing through the first several pages. “You are quite correct, Mr. Wilson: I find the Encyclopedia Britannica to be remarkably substandard.”

  “And it’s got such a reputation!” he cried.

  “I know! I’ve never heard a word against it. And yet, now I get down into the nitty-gritty of the thing I find myself rather unimpressed. Let me just turn to a random page… ‘Abbot: I the red-headed…’ Yes. There you are, you see? Indistinguishable from ‘Aardvark’. Any book of learning that cannot tell an abbot from an aardvark is unworthy to shape the minds of generations yet to come!”

  “I weep for the future, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Heh. Try convincing Watson of it, though. I bet if we showed him this, he’d talk himself blue defending it. ‘Britain is the best! Empire, empire! Blah, blah, blah!’ I think I’ll save myself the trouble, to be honest.”

  “So there is nothing here that might… uhhhh… help you to discover the… uhhhh…”

  “No. Nothing, I’m afraid. I suppose we ought to speak to the landlord about what became of Mr. Duncan Ross.”

  Yet even that yielded nothing. The landlord knew nobody by that name. When we asked him who had rented the office, he said it was a very red-headed gent named John Su-do Nimh—which he supposed must be an oriental name of some sort—but the fellow had settled up accounts yesterday.

  In the end, there was nothing for it but to bid Mr. Wilson good day and wander home to Baker Street. When I got there, Watson was sitting in his favorite chair, wearing his I’ve-just-done-something-rather-clever expression. He asked me if my investigation had borne any fruit. I told him all that had transpired. Well… I might not have mentioned the portrait, because it was only a portrait. Oh, and I may have omitted the encyclopedia, because I did not wish to argue. But, I know I told him about the bloomer-lady calendar because it was a seemingly innocuous detail. And Watson always says the outcome of such cases often hangs from a seemingly innocuous detail.

  “Other than that,” I confessed, “I’m afraid I have accomplished nothing.”

  “On the contrary, your labors were indispensable,” Watson beamed. “I must apologize to you, Holmes: I am guilty of a falsehood. I never did have a second engagement. I only wished for you to go somewhere with Mr. Wilson, other than Mr. Wilson’s pawnshop, down on Saxe-Coburg Square.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to knock on that door myself, sure that Mr. Wilson would not answer.”

  “Er… again, why?”

  “Reason it out, Holmes! Who else might answer in his stead?”

  “The assistant, Vincent Spaulding?”

  “And so he did! The knees of his trousers were dirty and worn! Why, if I were a betting man, I’d say they’d received some rather rough treatment these last eight weeks.”

  “So?”

  “By God, Holmes, do you still not see it? Here, I’ll give you another clue: I took that particularly heavy walking stick of yours along with me—”

  “Watson! You didn’t hold it to the sun at its zenith and cry, ‘Mergh-Rhagh-Hazzan,’ did you?”

  “Er… no…”

  “Well then, everything’s probably all right. What happened next?”

  “Upon meeting Mr. Spaulding and his trouser knees I concocted some excuse for my intrusion. I asked him the way to the Strand; he pointed down the street and said, ‘Third right, fourth left.’ He was very quick about it, hardly pausing to recall the information. I think Mr. Wilson’s inadvertent admission that the assistant is smarter than the m
aster was correct. But now for that clue I promised you: as I took my leave, I paused on the street in feigned indecision and struck the ground a few times very roughly with your heavy stick. Can you guess why?”

  “To dent the stick! No! To dent the street? No! Er… to build your shoulder muscles?”

  “To determine, Warlock, whether Mr. Wilson’s cellar stretches out in front of his shop or behind. The street was quite solid; the cellar does not stretch to the front. Can you guess what I did next?”

  “Ran round to another doctor, confessed that you have become fascinated with underground architecture and inquired if there was, perhaps, some pill that could rid you of this unwanted compulsion?”

  “No. I walked around to see what might lie behind Mr. Wilson’s humble little shop. And do you know what I found, right there between a tobacconist and a vegetarian restaurant? A branch of the City and Suburban Bank! Now, Holmes, you have all the clues. See if you can thread them all together and tell me what they mean.”

  I took a moment to collect my thoughts, to clear my mind as best I could and let the answer come to me.

  The red-heads unite against us! Kill them all! X’smex howled.

  Probably a red-headed soul-sucker, if I had to venture a guess, said either my own internal thoughts, or UUrduk, the Murder-God of the Six Ashen Wastes. Honestly, the two of them sound so alike and are so often in agreement, it can be quite the chore to tell which is which. I’ve rather stopped trying.

  Then Covfefe said, You’re too stupid to solve it. Stupid is a good word. I have the best words. I’m gonna take human form and solve it for you, okay? No problem. I’m great.

  I wanted to tell Covfefe that he’ll never pass himself off as human—he’s bright orange with white circles around his eyes—but Watson was staring at me, expecting an answer. So I said, “Probably a red-headed soul-sucker, if I had to venture a guess.”

  “No. What? Holmes, why would you think that?”

  “I’ve no idea, really.”