The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

by Theodora Goss

  The Tiger Man landed with his paws on Adam’s chest. Adam staggered back against the desk, but did not fall. The Tiger Man lunged for his face, but Adam hit him in the jaw with a fist—once, twice. With a roar, the Tiger Man fell to one side, landing heavily. He staggered and shook his head, disoriented. Where the paws had been on Adam’s chest, his shirt was torn and streaked with red. “Renfield, the keys!” shouted Adam.

  “And you’ll give me lives? Many lives, Master?”

  “Yes, as many as you want! Just throw me the keys, damn you!”

  Renfield tossed the keys into the air. They arced, silver in the lamplight, then jangled as Adam caught them. He stepped behind the desk and pushed the chair aside.

  “Watch out!” shouted Prendick. “There’s a gun in that drawer. We kept it locked because of the Beast Men.”

  The Tiger Man shook himself once more, then put his front paws on the desk and jumped up so he was standing on top of the desk, between them and Adam. The desk was covered with piles of paper, probably receipts and bills of lading for Alderney Shipping. The piles slid and pieces of paper fluttered as the Tiger Man moved among them. He snarled and swatted Adam across the face. Adam’s head snapped back, and long red welts appeared along his cheek. The Tiger Man reared back to strike again.

  “Diana! Give me your knife!” said Mary.

  “Why?” said Diana, not taking her eyes off the dangerous dance at the end of the room.

  “Because I need to cut bandages! And then you need to get Justine out of here.”

  “What? Why me?”

  “Because the rest of us have weapons, and you don’t,” said Mary. “For goodness’ sake, just do as you’re told for once! Lead Justine to the rendezvous place.”

  “What rendezvous place?”

  “Across the street! That alley where we all met. Just take her there.”

  “Oh, all right. I never get to be in on the fun.”

  “How is Watson doing?” asked Holmes, looking down for a moment.

  “Not well,” she replied. “We need to get him out of here as soon as possible.” She cut strips of cotton from her petticoat and wound them around his shoulder as best she could, but the bites were fierce and deep. If they did not get him out of the warehouse soon, Watson would bleed to death.

  Adam snarled back, as though he were an animal as well, and hit the Tiger Man once more across the face. The Tiger Man fell heavily, sending papers fluttering across the desk and to the floor. In the moment that gave him, Adam had unlocked the drawer and taken out a revolver. It shone, cold and metallic, in his hand.

  Holmes aimed, but once again the Tiger Man had risen and was between them. He roared, and then there came another roar: Adam had fired the revolver directly into his mouth. The Tiger Man fell back onto the floor in a shower of papers. As he fell, his paws reached for a final purchase. One of them caught the lamp, which toppled and rolled over the desk.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” shouted Adam to Diana. “You’re not taking her anywhere!”

  Mary glanced back for a moment. Thank goodness—she could see Justine disappearing through the office door. How would Adam respond?

  He was still standing behind the desk, revolver raised. There were papers on the desk, papers on the floor, and now—“They’re burning!” shouted Catherine.

  Oil spilled from the lamp and spread across the desk. Suddenly, the desktop was in flames. Adam stepped back and raised his hands, as though to ward them off.

  “We must get out of here!” said Beatrice. “The chemicals in those jars are flammable.”

  “Out, now, all of you!” said Holmes. “Mary, can you support Watson?”

  “With help,” she said. “It will have to be Catherine. He’s too weak to breathe Beatrice’s poison.”

  “I’ll help,” said Hyde. Mary looked at him, startled. Why was he offering to help? No doubt so they would let him escape. . . .

  “You’re not as strong as I am,” said Catherine contemptuously. She put her shoulder under Watson’s arm. Mary put her shoulder under the other, and together, they raised him. Holmes still stood with his revolver trained on Adam, who was almost invisible behind the flames on the desk and the smoke rising from them.

  The papers on the floor had caught fire as well. Renfield was screaming, a high shriek like a teakettle on the boil. Something bolted out from under the operating table—the Orangutan Man. He ran toward Holmes. More quickly than the detective could respond, the Orangutan Man reverted to his animal nature and, on all fours, slipped between Holmes and the doorframe, then out the door.

  “He’s not important,” said Holmes. “But you need to go! I’ll stay and see this through to the end.”

  They filed out through the space behind Holmes: Beatrice first, then Mary and Catherine supporting Watson between them. Hyde tried to follow them, but “I don’t think so,” said Holmes. “You’re not leaving until I do.” As they left the room, Mary glanced back. Holmes raised his revolver and shot at the lantern hanging from the ceiling. The reservoir shattered, and oil spilled over the floor. In a moment, it too was in flames.

  Then she saw Adam, in flames, lurching from behind the desk, across the room. How many bullets did Holmes have left? She had not kept count . . .

  But she could not stay to help him. There was Watson to get out into the cool night air. She and Catherine followed Beatrice down the hall, stumbling out the door. They crossed the street, with Watson’s feet dragging on the stones between them. In the alley, Diana was waiting, with Justine and Charlie. And—

  “Alice!” she cried. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  Together, she and Catherine set Watson down, as gently as they could, against the brick wall of a warehouse. He was moaning and barely conscious.

  “She’s from the Magdalen Society,” said Catherine. “How do you know her?”

  “She used to be my scullery maid, is how,” said Mary. “Alice, what were you doing—”

  “Look!” said Beatrice. Through the first-floor window, they could see that the warehouse office was filled with flames. And in a moment, they could see flames through the window on the second floor as well. Flames rose to the roof of the warehouse. Where was Holmes? Mary scanned the building anxiously.

  “Don’t forget, we have a wounded man,” Beatrice reminded her.

  “Of course.” He would be all right. He must be all right. Sherlock Holmes would not be defeated by Adam Frankenstein . . . would he? No, certainly not, she told herself. She turned to Charlie. “Can you find some way to get Dr. Watson to a hospital? He needs to be looked at immediately. A cab, or a cart of some sort.” Mary checked the bandages on his shoulder. They were already stained through.

  “I’ll look, miss,” said Charlie, “though cabs don’t come to this part of the city, and I don’t know where I’m going to find a cart, this time of night.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Diana. “It’s better than waiting around here!” Before Mary could stop her, she followed Charlie into the darkness.

  “Damn that girl! Will she ever learn to do as she’s told?” Mary tried to make Watson as comfortable as she could on the cobblestones. He moaned again and shook his head back and forth—it reminded her of the wounded Tiger Man. Had Holmes come out of the warehouse yet? Resolutely, she brought her mind back to the problem at hand.

  “Someone is on fire!” said Justine. “Look—through the window. Is that him? Is that—Adam?” In the warehouse office lurched a form, massive, entirely engulfed in flames. The flames were so high and bright now, blazing through the windows and up from the roof, that they illuminated even the alley.

  “It must be,” said Catherine. “Who else would be that tall?”

  Two shots rang out—who had fired them? And then Holmes was running out of the building, with Hyde at his heels. Mary breathed a sigh of relief on seeing Holmes. But Hyde—for a moment, she wished he could have died in the fire. The thought was wrong, unworthy of her. This was her father . . . no, she was not
ready to accept that. Not yet.

  When they reached the alley, Hyde looked back at the burning warehouse. “I don’t suppose even Frankenstein’s creature can escape such a conflagration,” he said. “Wait, what are you doing?”

  Holmes had clapped a pair of handcuffs on him. “Edward Hyde, you are under arrest for the murder of Sir Danvers Carew. It will give me great pleasure to deliver you to Scotland Yard.”

  Hyde snarled like a dog, then threw back his head and laughed. “Nicely played, Mr. Holmes. It will be my great pleasure to see you prove your case in court.”

  “And I will be sorry when you are hanged, Mr. Hyde.”

  “Wait, where’s Prendick?” asked Catherine. “Did he get out? Is he still in there?”

  MARY: I was worried you were going to run back in after him!

  CATHERINE: Certainly not. I mean, I did think about it for a moment. Because unlike him, I don’t leave people to die.

  “I have no idea,” said Holmes. “In the confusion of the fire, he could have run toward the back of the building and escaped out the window.”

  “Prendick always was a coward,” said Hyde. “A coward and a mediocre scientist who lacked imagination. It was foolish of Moreau to teach him as much as he did.”

  “That’s probably the only thing on which we will ever agree,” said Catherine.

  “Isn’t that him?” asked Beatrice.

  A dark shape was running across the road toward them. “Don’t leave me! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” Renfield waved his hands frantically.

  “All right, you won’t die,” said Holmes. “Just come with us—quietly, mind—and we’ll take you safely home again.”

  “To my flies?” asked Renfield, rubbing his hands together.

  “Yes, to your flies,” said Mary. “Big fat juicy ones. You just need to come with us.”

  “Since I am inconveniently out of handcuffs,” added Holmes.

  “Oh, I’ll go with you so nicely! I’ll be good, you’ll see!” Renfield smiled anxiously. He can’t be trusted, Mary thought. And yet they would have to trust him, for now. Certainly he was more deeply involved in this case—with the Société des Alchimistes, if not the murders—than they had thought. How had her father, or rather Hyde, convinced him to confess to murders he had not committed? And why Renfield in the first place? What was his connection with the society, and with Hyde? But this was no time for questions.

  With a crash, the roof of the warehouse fell in. They could see burning pieces of it falling into the second floor, where Beatrice had been held captive. The street was no longer dark. Now, light from the fire flickered across the cobblestones, illuminating the London night. Even in the alley, they could feel its heat and hear its roar, as though it were speaking with the voice of the dead Beast Men.

  “We need to move,” said Holmes. “Both for Watson’s sake, and because I need to let the authorities know there’s a fire. It could spread through this entire area.”

  “We found it!” Diana’s voice came out of the darkness. She emerged, followed by Charlie, into the light of the conflagration. “There’s a steamboat by the docks, and the captain is willing to take us upriver. He swore at us proper for waking him up, and said he wouldn’t take us for love or money. But I told him you had lots of money, so I hope you do. He says he won’t fire up the boiler until he sees it.”

  “He can take us to the Royal Hospital! Surely they’ll have the facilities to treat even such a wound,” said Mary. If only they could get Watson to a hospital quickly. . . .

  “Dr. Watson will not live that long, not if he loses more blood,” said Beatrice. “We must cauterize the wound.”

  “How?” asked Catherine. “There’s our fire to heat metal, but it’s too dangerous to approach. You can feel how hot it’s burning, even from here.” As she spoke, the second floor broke through and fell into the first. By the time the fire burned out, the building would be a skeleton.

  “I can do it.” Beatrice rolled back her sleeves. “Mary, remove those bandages. They must be changed anyway—they are soaked through with blood.”

  “A chemical burn. How clever of you, Miss Rappaccini,” said Hyde.

  Beatrice looked at him scornfully. “You would have made me a murderer,” she said. Mary had not realized she could sound so contemptuous.

  MARY: And I’ve never heard you sound like that since.

  DIANA: Oh no, our Beatrice is always so polite!

  MARY: Unlike some.

  Mary removed the bandages as quickly as she could, trying not to think about how deep those gashes must be, what all that blood meant. When the shoulder was bare, although crusted with blood, Beatrice touched it—carefully, carefully, with the tips of her fingers. Where she touched, the dried blood bubbled away and the skin burned. But it was clean, as though disinfected by fire. With more strips from her petticoat, Mary bandaged the shoulder again.

  “Nicely done. You would make a good nurse, Miss Jekyll,” said Holmes. Mary flushed at the compliment, glad it was dark so Holmes could not see. “Now, I must get Watson to the hospital. Charlie, can you find the nearest fire station and alert the Fire Brigade?”

  “Of course we can,” said Diana. “If you turn left, and left again, there’s a road down to the docks. The boat is named Hesperus—it’s painted on the side.”

  “No! You stay right here—,” said Mary, but it was already too late. Charlie and Diana had melted away into the darkness. “Damn and double damn!”

  “Well, Miss Prim and Proper is cursing,” said Catherine. “That, I never thought I would hear!”

  “You’re going to hear it a lot more if she keeps behaving like that,” said Mary.

  DIANA: And I have! You know, it would do you good to curse a little more. . . .

  MARY: Don’t you have something productive to do? Like, I don’t know, drink poison?

  “I’ll lift Watson, if someone can help me on the other side,” said Holmes.

  “That will not be necessary,” said Justine. “I am recovered from the ether now. I can carry him myself.”

  What a strange procession they made! Catherine walked in front, since she was the only one who could see in the dark, wearing Holmes’s frock coat over her nakedness. The moon shone brightly onto the street down to the water, but the warehouses in this area were old, the streets badly maintained. It was easy to trip over uneven stones or bits of refuse. Behind Catherine, Justine carried Watson as easily as she would carry a large pillow. Behind her walked Holmes, with Hyde at his side in handcuffs, and Beatrice next to him. He had been warned that if he tried to escape, either Catherine would bite him or Beatrice would breathe on him. He did not seem to relish either option. Then came Mary with Alice, and finally Renfield in the rear, afraid to be left behind in the darkness.

  CHAPTER XVII

  A Boat on the Thames

  Even in the darkness, Mary could see that Alice had her arms wrapped around herself. She took off her mackintosh and draped it over the girl’s shoulders. “There, put your arms into the sleeves and button up the front. It’s too cold for a nightgown. How ever did you end up at the Magdalen Society? I thought you were going back to your family in . . . the country somewhere? I don’t think you ever told us.”

  “Will you be angry, miss, if I tell you that I lied to you and Mrs. Poole? There weren’t no family in the country, just a charity school. My mum left me at an orphanage when I was only a baby. Guess she couldn’t take care of me herself. When I was old enough to learn my letters, I was sent to the School for Impoverished Children in Spitalfields. I’ve never been outside London.”

  “But you told me about milking cows and gathering eggs!” It was difficult to believe that Alice—shy, silent Alice—had lied, particularly to Mrs. Poole. Why, Mary herself wouldn’t have been brave enough to lie to the housekeeper.

  MRS. POOLE: She knows I’ve forgiven her. Alice is a good girl, and won’t do it again.

  ALICE: Thank you, Mrs. Poole.

  “Aye,
one of the other girls was from the country,” said Alice. “At the school there were two kinds: girls whose parents paid for them, though little enough it was, and girls who had no parents, and who were paid for by subscription. That was me, one of the charity girls. My friend was one of the paid girls—her dad paid for her, because her mother had died and her stepmother didn’t like her. We shared a bed, and at night when I couldn’t sleep, she used to tell me stories about life on the farm. She was terrible homesick!”

  “But why did you lie to us?” They were at the water now. Moonlight shone down on the Thames, and at the dock, among the boats moored there, was the Hesperus. Its lanterns were lit, fore and aft, and Mary could see its name written in white paint on the prow. It was a small steam launch, with its chimney already smoking—the captain must have decided to trust them after all.

  “Ahoy, there!” called Holmes. “May we board, Captain?”

  “Aye, if you’ll show me you can afford it,” shouted a rough voice. The captain stepped into the lantern light. He was what Mary would have expected a steamboat captain to look like: grizzled, with a knit sweater and flat cap on his head. “A pound for each person, that’s what I want. And if I can count correctly, and I can, there are nine of you, and that makes nine pounds even.”

  “Nine pounds!” said Mary. That was an outrageous sum!

  “Aye, that’s what I want, little lady. And it looks to me as though you’ll pay it, seeing as that gentleman ain’t looking too healthy. What did he do, drink too much? And what are you, circus performers? Not that I care, mind you. It takes all sorts to make a world, and there are sorts down here by the docks that would make you think the world was a strange place indeed.”

  “I’ll give you five now, and the rest when we get to the Royal Hospital,” said Holmes. “This man is wounded—we must get him to a doctor as soon as possible. I give you my word that you shall be paid.”

  “Aye, and who might you be, leading a man around in handcuffs, followed by loose women in various states of undress? How am I to know you’re not a criminal yourself?”