Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual

by G. S. Denning

  Holmes tried not to laugh. He really did make every effort. He didn’t want to mock our guest, but he could not quite choke back a half-swallowed, half-spat, “Phffft!”

  I looked at him, with a mind to chide, but in a moment I, too, was giggling. There we stood laughing until our eyes ran, while Hilton Soames fumed.

  “Evil? Oh! Oh! How dare you?” Holmes mocked.

  “Why ever would you think so?” I asked, indicating my clothes with feigned incredulity.

  We laughed a moment longer, then finally Holmes went to our guest, laid a comforting hand on Soames’s shoulder, and said, “Really, Hilton, you must pardon my friend and me but… you see… some men hide their intentions well and some do not.”

  “Your buttons are skulls,” I chortled.

  “And as I have told you before,” giggled Holmes, “if I met a kitten with that goatee, I could not trust him. Now, I know you better than to assume this is a social call. Was there something you wanted?”

  “Perhaps,” said Soames. His eyes found me again and searched me up and down. “Who is this?”

  “Oh, it’s only Watson,” said Holmes. “Anything you can say to me, you can say before him.”

  “You trust him so perfectly, do you?”

  “Well… perhaps I’d better say: anything you say to me, I might forget is secret and mention to Watson over breakfast. Plus, he’s a rather clever fellow. Really, Soames, if you’ve got a problem, Watson is a most useful gentleman to have about.”

  “I do have a problem. We may all have a problem,” Soames growled. “My carriage is just outside. Will you come to St. Luke’s?”

  “Could you, Watson?” Holmes asked.

  “Well, I do have one appointment, but I can hardly express how glad I’d be to skip it, so… yes.”

  “Capital. Just let us gather our coats, Soames.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later, the three of us were seated in a cab, bound for the College of St. Luke’s. As we drove, Soames began his tale.

  “Have you ever heard of Fortescue’s Binding?”

  “Not that I recall,” said Holmes. “What happened? Some fellow called Fortescue got himself tied up?”

  “No. Penton Fortescue—a lord and preeminent occult scholar—discovered a method to summon and bind demons. Potentially quite powerful ones. The ritual was performed only once, to summon three lesser demon ‘brothers’, who took the names Bannister, Railing and Low-Rising-Safety-Wall.”

  I gave Holmes a quizzical look.

  “Demons are weird,” he told me.

  “The summoning was permanent,” Soames continued. “Two of the demons are dead, but Bannister has continued to serve a number of England’s more prominent magical families—passed from one to another, over the generations, at no small expense. He has been in my service for almost eight years, now.”

  “So… Wait! Are we about to meet a demon?” I cried.

  Holmes sniffed. “I’d try to manage my excitement if I were you, Watson. He can’t be a very frightful fellow, or we’d have known about him before now.”

  “Quite so,” Soames agreed. “He is almost as disappointing as a demon as he is in his capacity as butler. The three were not native to this plane and survival here did not come easy. I’m sure Bannister would be gone by now, if he had not preserved himself by eating his weakening brothers.”

  “Ew,” I noted.

  “I believe Lord Fortescue summoned these three weaklings to test the underlying tenets of his ritual. The binding was utterly successful. Bannister was not only bound to Fortescue, but able to be passed, like any other piece of property, from person to person. After his initial success, Fortescue retired to refine his formulas, codify what he had learned, and perfect his ritual. Unfortunately, the doddering old codger then suffered a change of heart. It seems he came to regard his own work as dangerous and unsavory. For years, it has been assumed that he destroyed all copies of his notes—the Fortescue Binding has been fragmentary and incomplete.”

  “Oh no,” moaned Holmes.

  “However, recently…”

  “Oh. Yes. I see what’s going on,” I said.

  “…I have, through diligent searching, reconstructed the entire ritual.”

  “Well, of course you have,” said Holmes, rolling his eyes, “and aren’t you just so pleased with yourself?”

  “He can’t be all that chuffed about it,” I noted, “or else he wouldn’t have come to us, would he?”

  Soames shifted in his seat, sniffed with wounded pride and muttered, “I am afraid its secrecy has been compromised.”

  “Surprise!” Holmes said to me. We had another giggle.

  “It is no subject for merriment,” Soames insisted. “I had, for some time, been instructing my three apprentices in sections of Fortescue’s ritual. I had been preparing them to aid me in the summoning. But I had been careful— most careful, Holmes—that no one student should possess knowledge of the entire ritual. In fact, their knowledge was so fragmentary—so confined to that which I needed them to know—that the lads presented no threat. I myself intended to be nothing more than a responsible steward of this knowledge.”

  “Riiiiiiight,” said Holmes.

  “I am a simple scholar!”

  “Oh, of course you are.”

  “I am on the side of the angels, sir! I am at the head of a small but important school of human knowledge. I was tasked by Her Majesty Queen Victoria to extend and protect Britain’s unique magical knowledge and heritage at the honored institution of St. Luke’s.”

  “Yes. I know,” said Holmes. “And I’m sure that the very instant he sees it, Watson will agree that there is simply no possibility that St. Luke’s might be Britain’s foremost haven for evil wizards, or those who might wish to become one.”

  “I am beginning to gather that impression,” I said.

  Soames continued. “Earlier this morning, the proofs of the Fortescue Binding arrived from the local printer—”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” I interjected. “You gave them to a regular printer?”

  “As I think I have said before, I am a humble university professor, of limited means.”

  “On the contrary, I think you boasted that you could afford a rather expensive demon butler,” I reminded him.

  “Well… I suppose I may have forgotten to mention that Bannister was donated to the college. I never stated that I purchased him. And why not send the ritual to a simple printer? What harm could the man do with it? To him, it is just three sheaves of utter nonsense. To me, a treasure beyond accounting.”

  “He’s probably right about that, Watson,” said Holmes. “So, having finished the day’s advertisements about lost doggies and bicycles for sale, the local printer dashes off a copy of a lost demon-summoning ritual, delivers it to you and… then what happened?”

  “I was so pleased at the state of the complete documents, I decided to take tea with a colleague of mine.”

  “Decided to have a gloat, you mean,” Holmes chuckled.

  Soames shut his eyes and drew a deep, calming breath. “Upon my return just over an hour later, I was dismayed to find a key protruding from the door of my office. I had, of course, locked the room tight, knowing the value of the document that sat upon my desk. There are only two keys to that door, Holmes. One remained in my possession. The other was Bannister’s.”

  “And did the one in the door prove to be your demon butler’s?” I asked.

  “Yes. The little blighter admitted it the moment I confronted him. The reason may have been harmless enough—he says he checked in to see if I required any refreshment and forgot the key in the door.”

  “Poorly done, Soames,” said Warlock.

  “Even then, it should have been safe! Nobody knew it was there!”

  “The printer knew,” I pointed out. “Bannister knew.”

  “Bannister? Ha! Do you suppose I am in the habit of telling every demon I know that I am in possession of a demon-binding ritual? Bannister knows whe
re the tea is kept and that’s all he needs to know. Nevertheless, this cannot change the fact that, for over an hour, the Fortescue Binding sat unguarded in a room that anybody might have walked into.”

  “And you have reason to suspect somebody did,” I deduced, “or you would not have come to seek our aid.”

  Soames gave a grim nod. “When I stepped back into my chambers, I realized the manuscript had been disturbed and a token of fell intent had been left for me to discover.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to see it!” said Holmes. “I love a good token of fell intent.”

  “You’ll not have long to wait,” said Soames.

  He was right. St. Luke’s turned out to be the smallest constituent college of the University of London. That is to say: it was so small as to be forgettable. It currently had only one teacher and three students, and its reputation was so slight that—though it lay less than a mile and a half from my home—I had never heard of the thing.

  Really, we might have walked there.

  It was a pleasant day—a bit hot, perhaps, but sunny and cheerful. Hilton Soames took some care to impress us, as we neared his section of the grand old school, crying, “Behold! The proving grounds of Trakken Feeld, the leathern steeds of Pom-Ehl, and the black pit of shattered hopes!”

  By these, he meant, respectively: the track field, two dusty old gymnastics pommel horses and the long-jump pit (which, I have to admit, was formed of an unusually dark and ill-seeming clay).

  From this, the reader may deduce two facts. First, that we were passing the athletics field. Second, that Hilton Soames was trying much too hard.

  In truth, I think he was compensating in advance. The College of St. Luke’s was composed of a single, gray, stumpy building. It must have been very old—certainly medieval. It consisted of a lower floor with Soames’s quarters, his office and one lecture hall. Upstairs were rooms to accommodate eight or nine students, but most were disused. Soames pointed out which rooms were which with the butt of his walking stick as we approached. When he indicated the window to his office, Holmes cried out, “Oh! Your desk! It’s magnificent!”

  There seemed to be no hint of irony in his voice, so I could only assume he meant the compliment earnestly. The reason I could only assume was that Holmes was a great deal taller than I. Maybe he could see the desk in question, but I would have had to hop up on Soames’s shoulders to see in through that window. As this is not the act of a gentleman, I elected to wait.

  Soames led us around the corner and into the College of St. Luke’s. A demon took our coats.

  But not a very good one.

  To my secret disappointment, Bannister was a patently unimpressive fellow. He might easily be mistaken for a human, but not a very happy one. His face was slightly too round, too shiningly white, too doughy. His deep-sunk eyes were surrounded by bags of extreme weariness that I think no true human could match. His arms were just a few inches too long and bent with such saggy alacrity that they must either be prehensile tentacles or possessed of a few extra elbows—none of them with any strength. He had the look of a being so worn down by life that his death could not be far away. Nor did it seem as if it would be particularly unwelcome.

  The reappearance of his master did nothing to improve the day he was having. As Soames swept off his hat and cloak, he told Bannister, “This is Warlock Holmes and his colleague John Watson. Bring tea.”

  Bannister gave a subservient wobble and sloshed off towards the kitchen.

  “Useless creature,” Soames declared, before Bannister was out of earshot.

  I watched him go and wondered aloud, “Is it usual for him to leave the key to your study in the door?”

  “No. I cannot recall that he has ever erred so badly. Yet, his entire life is one of persistent domestic deficiencies. He leaves milk out. Forgets little errands. He let the cat out one September and didn’t think to look for him again until March. His memory has grown as feeble as the rest of him. If you are wondering if he could have purposely opened the door for the intruder, Dr. Watson, I assure you he could not. He is bound to my will. He must do as I bid. He answers to no other man, nor can he betray the interests of his sworn master. I think it is merely the wretched contrivance of coincidence that he should miscarry his duty on the very day of the proofs’ arrival. Damn it all! If I believed luck to be a living thing—a god or a demon—I would believe he hates me.”

  “She,” Holmes corrected him. “She hates you.”

  “Show us the office, won’t you?” I asked.

  Do you know, it was a nice desk. Soames had one of those huge, lovingly polished numbers all professors seem to have, for the purpose of glaring archly at students from behind it. He also had a little writing table to do actual work at. It was topped in tasteful red leather and sat near the front window, with a little chair drawn up beside it. At this table, Hilton Soames leveled one finger—shaking with theatrical dread—and intoned, “Behold! The token of fell intent!”

  Upon the table lay a bizarre little pyramid of dark, oily earth, its surface mottled by a sprinkle of what appeared to be sawdust. Holmes was utterly charmed by it. He turned it over and about, sniffed it, shook it and demanded that it yield all its secrets to him.

  It didn’t.

  The three rolls of Fortescue’s Binding were scattered about the room. One lay upon Soames’s monolithic desk, where he said he’d left it. Another lay on the small writing table, next to a broken nib of pencil and a few shavings. The last was face down on the windowsill.

  “Is that the regular position of the writing table, Mr. Soames?” I asked.

  “No, it is usually there, near the hearth. I sometimes move it to the window if I need the light, but I will swear it was not there when I left this morning.”

  “I think you are correct,” I said. “You have been burgled. I would further suppose that this must be the first page of the binding ritual…”

  I indicated the face-down sheet by the window.

  “…that is the second…”

  The page upon the writing table.

  “…and this must be the last.”

  The page on his desk.

  Soames’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot possibly be able to read that text, Dr. Watson,” he growled. “How did you know?”

  “Of course not. One of them is face down, so I certainly could not have read that. But I can read the situation, I think. See? Your window looks down towards the entrance to this building. Your thief must have known you had gone, but dreaded your return. He took the writing desk to the window, so he could watch for you while he copied it.”

  “He copied it?” Soames cried. “Why, this is disastrous! How do you know he was not merely reading it?”

  “He broke his pencil and paused to resharpen it,” I said, indicating the nib and shavings. “Yet, it may be fortunate for us that he attempted a copy. If he had only read it, he might have finished the whole thing. Instead, he was interrupted before his knowledge was complete. He finished copying the first page and turned it face down, then went back for the second, leaving the third still on your desk. At some point, he must have seen you returning, abandoned his task and retreated.”

  Warlock smiled and mumbled, “Watson’s getting very good at this sort of thing, isn’t he?” to the tiny tetrahedral lump he held in his hand.

  But Soames disagreed.

  “Wrong! He could not have seen me returning from that window, for I came in through the side door! If it were my return that surprised him, it could only come as I opened the door to this very room! If that were the case, I must have seen him. There is no other exit from these chambers.”

  “Except that one,” I said, indicating the office’s perfectly obvious other door.

  “Oh, but that’s just my bedroom,” said Soames.

  “May I see it?”

  Soames looked annoyed, but allowed the intrusion. He had a humble room, with only two pieces of furniture, though the fault of that lay squarely on Soames. Apparently the man took s
uch pride in his wicked sorcerer’s attire that he’d felt he needed to fill the better half of his living quarters with the largest, most magnificent, most preposterous wardrobe I’d ever seen. His bed lay scrunched in a corner, in the little remaining space.

  I had thought that perhaps the thief might have made his way in here and escaped through a window, but that thought was foiled. There was a window, but its latch looked to be as old as the building. It was so corroded, so crusted shut by age and oxidation that the amount of force necessary to open it must have far exceeded the amount that would have shattered it. No thief had gone that way. I squeezed my brows together with one hand and thought. There were still so many pieces I was missing.

  “Want me to just call up a demon and ask what happened?” Holmes offered.

  “No! I forbid it! Look here, I will solve this problem, Holmes, and no sorcery will be required.”

  “Oh? So confident, Watson?” he chided.

  “Holmes, there are only three students. Only three real suspects.”

  “Oh… right…”

  “It significantly limits the complexity of this case, I would think. Besides which, we have hardly begun to explore the available clues. Mr. Soames, where were you when you first suspected you’d been robbed?”

  “In the front hall. I’d come in the side door and was approaching my office when I saw Bannister’s key in the lock. I cried out in surprise, then yelled for Bannister and we went in to see what had happened.”

  “You waited for Bannister to arrive before you went in?” I asked.

  “Well, I was furious with him. And I knew he could be no more than one or two rooms away.”

  “And you say you cried out? So, the thief did have warning you were returning. He must have been terrified. To hear you right outside the only reasonable exit… He’d have panicked. Hmm… Tell me, when you entered and discovered your proofs had been disturbed, what did you do?”

  “I think I yelled at Bannister a fair bit. Oh! And I ran about to see if I could see who might have done it.”

  “But you saw nobody?”

  “No.”

  “Did you look in this bedroom?”