Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust

by James Lovegrove

  “One of several left behind,” Holmes said, “all alike.”

  “And the fellow himself?” I said, clambering unsteadily to my feet.

  “Gone,” said Quatermain. “I was just now at the summit of that ash over there, which afforded me a panoramic view over the vicinity. The sniper is nowhere in sight. He has quit the scene.”

  “I concur,” said Holmes. “Footprints leading out of the shrubbery show that he has made off towards Kensington High Street.”

  “We must follow with all due haste,” I said.

  Holmes shrugged his shoulders. “If he has any strategic sense, he will have left a cab waiting for him there. But if you insist…”

  The road was busy with traffic, while crowds milled about on the pavement. Many of these people had been drawn by the gunfire, and they were jabbering noisily to one another, speculating on what it might mean. For us even to hope for a glimpse of our would-be killer was futile.

  I huffed with frustration, but Holmes was sanguine. “All is not lost,” said he. “In addition to the shell casings, my delving amidst the shrubbery yielded clues about the sniper’s physical appearance, his smoking habits, and his footwear, all of them useful and pertinent. More generally speaking, this little escapade has been instructive about our enemy’s frame of mind.”

  “Oh yes?” I said. “How?”

  “Our enemy is becoming ever more aggrieved and desperate. To attempt to kill us in broad daylight is a bold stroke. It is clear we are setting alarm bells ringing ever louder, and the more precipitate the action launched against us is, the likelier it will be that the instigator makes a mistake and exposes himself.”

  “I cannot fault your logic, but neither am I comfortable with it. As the attacks upon us escalate, so do the odds of one being successful. Fatally so. It was bad enough when it was just rats and pigeons. Now it is gunfire. What next? A twelve-pound cannon aimed at our lodgings?”

  “Rats and pigeons?” Quatermain queried. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Briefly I related the events of the previous night.

  “Hmmm. Wild animals being used as a weapon, targeted specifically against two individuals… What does that say to you? To me, it smacks of witchcraft.”

  “To you, Quatermain, everything smacks of witchcraft,” said Holmes. “The rats and pigeons were drugged, that is all. They had been driven out of their minds by the ingestion of a powerful psychotropic substance. No further human intercession was necessary beyond simply introducing them into our lodgings and letting their feral natures, unshackled from their accustomed timidity in the presence of humans, do the rest.”

  “Nevertheless, hear me out, Holmes. The ability to command animals to do your bidding is a common one amongst African witch-doctors. That wizard I mentioned – the one who showed me an image of Heu-heu the man-ape in fire – he was capable of just that sort of sorcery. Zikali was his name. He was my nemesis, that dwarfish old rascal, and proved a formidable antagonist. He was also a shameless trickster and cheat, but I never once had reason to doubt he possessed weird powers. I saw them in action too many times to deny them.”

  “We are in London now, not Africa, Quatermain.”

  “Magic is magic, wherever you go.”

  “But there is no Zikali here, is there?” Holmes insisted. “There are no wizards at all.”

  “There is no Zikali, that is for sure. I watched him die. It was five years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. I watched the little fiend plunge into a foaming waterfall with a yellow-bellied snake wrapped around him. He was committing suicide after wreaking his final, most terrible act of wickedness, the murder of King Cetawayo. However, he is not the only wizard ever to have walked the earth.”

  “And another is amongst us now, at large in London?”

  “Yes,” said Quatermain ominously. “Even if you do not believe it, I do. There can be no other way of accounting for what happened to the two of you last night.”

  “I am at least prepared to accept that an African witch-doctor works for Fanthorpe Overseas Ventures,” said Holmes. “The conclusion seems more than plausible; it seems probable. The use of the Devil’s Dust at Silasville would only really be effective as a restraint on the miners’ behaviour if it were the handiwork of one of their own kind, someone like your Zikali who, by dint of his ‘warlock’ status, could command reverence and terror. Would you not agree, Quatermain?”

  “I would. I have met few in Africa who are unafraid of magic. As a breed, wizards and witch-doctors routinely evoke in their countrymen an awestruck dread of just the kind Bradford Wade described.”

  “Then – setting aside for the moment the question of whether magic actually exists – what we have is a witch-doctor on the Fanthorpe payroll meting out summary justice upon the workforce at the mine, doubtless at the management’s behest. It is the perfect solution to the labour problems Silasville was experiencing.”

  “And what if that witch-doctor is now over here, having pursued Wade to England?” Quatermain said. “You must admit it is not impossible.”

  “Someone is over here deploying the Devil’s Dust, that much seems certain. And someone – whether or not it is the same person – despatched hordes of vermin against Watson and me, and has subsequently shot at all three of us, a rather more prosaic form of aggression. I daresay that this someone will not rest until either he has finished the job or we show clear signs of abandoning our investigation. Maybe that was all this attack in Kensington Gardens was meant to do – scare us again. It would explain why the fellow departed with such alacrity instead of staying to bag a kill.”

  “Or,” said Quatermain slowly, “his intent was simply to keep us occupied.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Quatermain stepped out into the roadway, raising one hand aloft while inserting fingers of the other between his lips in order to emit a very loud, piercingly shrill whistle. A passing hackney cab – a four-seater brougham – drew to an abrupt halt beside him. Had the cabman been slightly slower off the mark and less adroit with the reins, his horses might have trampled Quatermain.

  He sent some choice oaths Quatermain’s way, but the latter, seemingly oblivious, climbed into the cab and demanded to be taken to Victoria Park.

  Holmes leapt in beside him, and I swiftly joined them. The cabman cracked the whip and yelled “Yah!”, and off we trotted.

  “Victoria Park,” said Holmes to Quatermain. “You are concerned about Umslopogaas.”

  “I feel the need to check on him,” came the reply. “It may be nothing, but suppose the man with the Mauser rifle has been tracking me all day. He may then know where I came from. He may be returning thither now to lie in wait, so that he can take another crack at me. In the meantime he may decide to take a crack at Umslopogaas.”

  Quatermain’s mouth was set in a grim line.

  “That hoary old Zulu is as close to me as any brother,” he said. “I would never forgive myself if something happened to him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ROMULUS MINUS REMUS

  The traffic, bad on Kensington High Street, worsened around Hyde Park Corner. By the time we were halfway up Park Lane, the brougham was crawling along at a snail’s pace.

  Quatermain chafed at the delay, drumming his fingers upon his thigh ever harder. Eventually, as we came to a complete standstill, he thumped on the roof of the cab to get the cabman’s attention. “What’s the hold-up?” he barked.

  “Looks like an omnibus up ahead at Marble Arch, guvnor. It’s turned over. Can’t see if anyone’s hurt, but it’s a right old mess. Blocking the entire road. I expect we’ll be here for quite a while before the wreckage is cleared.”

  “Quite a while!” Quatermain declared, fuming. “That’s not good enough. Don’t you know an alternative route?”

  “If you look around you, sir, you’ll see that the whole road’s jammed, that side as well as this. There’s others what have had the same idea as you, and they’ve g
ot themselves all nicely snarled up. Nobody’s going anywhere in a hurry.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Quatermain flung himself out of the cab and headed forward. Without a second thought he leapt astride one of the pair of horses.

  “Oi!” the cabman cried. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Going somewhere in a hurry,” Quatermain replied. Producing a knife, he bent and slashed through the leather traces attaching the horse to the carriage. Another couple of slashes severed the reins. Yet another slash put paid to the pole strap.

  By now the cabman was on his feet and shouting. “Devil take you, sir! How dare you! Those things cost money.”

  “And I will reimburse you,” Quatermain said over his shoulder. “I’m good for it. Ask those two.”

  “I don’t care if you’re a ruddy millionaire,” said the cabman. “You can’t just steal a man’s livelihood right from under his nose.”

  He drew back the whip and lashed it at Quatermain, just missing the tip of his ear.

  By then, however, Quatermain had freed the horse entirely from its trappings. At the snap of the whip, the beast reared and whinnied, and Quatermain, with his hands clamped around the backband, dug his heels into the creature’s flanks, spurring it on.

  Next moment, the horse was galloping off down the road, with Quatermain crouching atop. For all that he was riding more or less bareback, he appeared as at ease and in control as if his steed were equipped with the full panoply of bridle, saddle and stirrups. He wove a deft path through narrow openings in the stationary traffic.

  “Remus!” the cabman called out, somewhat forlornly. “Remus, come back!”

  The horse, if it even heard, paid no heed. The partner it had left behind tossed its head and stamped its hooves in apparent bemusement, as though it could not fathom how the other had escaped while it remained stuck fast.

  “Oh, Romulus,” the cabman lamented to the remaining horse. “Your brother. He has kidnapped your brother.” He rounded on us. “You,” he said with venom. “That man is your friend. I hold you answerable for him.”

  “You should not,” said Holmes, alighting from the cab. “Allan Quatermain is a force of nature. We can restrain him no more than we could the tornado or the tsunami.”

  “Here,” I said to the cabman. “A half-crown for your troubles. And this.” Along with the money, I handed him the card Quatermain had given me earlier. “Whatever expenses you incur buying new tack, send the bill to that address. You will be repaid. As for your horse, rest assured you will get it back unharmed. Simply write the name and address of the stables you use in this notepad. I shall do the rest.”

  We walked away, leaving the cabman to gnash his teeth and mutter.

  “You should not make promises you cannot keep, Watson,” said Holmes.

  “I will see to it that Quatermain does the right thing. The man is a liability but, for the time being at least, he is our liability.”

  “Never let it be said that my Watson is not a shining beacon of integrity.”

  “I try.”

  It took us some while to find another cab, and the journey to Victoria Park was torturously slow. Locating Quatermain’s camp was the work of a further half an hour. This time we did not have a blood trail to follow, and the park looked very different in daylight than it had at night. After some trial and error we found the thicket, which Holmes affirmed was the one we sought because there were fresh hoof marks in the surrounding grass. He called out Quatermain’s name while I kept lookout in case any passers-by happened along. There was no answer, and nobody else in sight, so we ventured in.

  Of either Quatermain or Umslopogaas within, we found no sign. Another notable absence was Groan-Maker, Umslopogaas’s axe.

  “They are gone,” I said.

  “There is nothing quite like stating the obvious,” said Holmes. “The question is, under what circumstances did they leave? The lack of Groan-Maker is suggestive. If Umslopogaas had been kidnapped by force, he would not have taken his beloved weapon with him. He would not have had the opportunity.”

  “Unless he was lured out first, bringing Groan-Maker with him as a precautionary measure, and then was ambushed.”

  “In which case, there would be signs of a struggle outside, and I have discerned none,” said Holmes. “What I do discern, however, is a significant difference in the condition of the camp since last we saw it.”

  “It looks little changed to me,” I said. “A shade untidier, perhaps.”

  “Look harder. Do you not see one thing which was not there before?”

  I peered around, to no avail.

  “The ground, Watson,” said my friend. “To be specific, the image drawn in that patch of loose soil there.”

  I followed his pointing finger. There was indeed an image scratched into the floor of the camp, which I reproduce here:

  It was crudely delineated, and to judge by the thickness of the lines, either a stick or a fingertip had been used as a stylus. Beside it lay a smattering of copper pennies, the coins seeming to have been casually discarded.

  “What do you make of it?” my friend enquired.

  “It resembles a geometry problem,” I said. “Or it could be an arcane symbol of some sort, evidence perhaps of the witchcraft Quatermain insists is in play.”

  “And the pennies?”

  “If it is an arcane symbol, might the coins represent an offering? A stimulus for future prosperity? You are no doubt going to tell me I am nowhere near the truth with any of this conjecture.”

  “At present I cannot claim to know what the image is,” said Holmes. “It is notable nonetheless. It is no casual adornment. It has been added here for some purpose, and the coins are part of it. There is also a smaller anomaly, which you may be forgiven for having overlooked.”

  He bent to examine the ground close by the image. Between thumb and forefinger he picked up a scrap of soil. He held it to his eye for close scrutiny, then sniffed it, before dropping it into one of the small envelopes which he kept in his pocket for collecting samples of this kind.

  “What is so interesting about that particular piece of soil?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Holmes replied, straightening up, “other than that it doesn’t belong. It is from elsewhere. Whence exactly it originates, however, is another matter, one I shall conduct research into back at Baker Street.”

  “At least we can assume that Umslopogaas departed under his own steam.”

  “An alternative interpretation of the evidence is that he and Quatermain have trekked off together on some mission.”

  “We have not.”

  These words came from without, and were accompanied by a soft equine snorting. We crawled outside to find Quatermain there, still astride Remus. He had managed to ride up to the camp so stealthily that we had not heard so much as a hoofbeat. His expression was grave.

  “Umslopogaas?” I said.

  “It is as I feared,” said Quatermain. “He is nowhere to be seen. While I was off gallivanting, someone took him.”

  “Can you know that for sure?” said Holmes. “He could simply be running some errand and will return forthwith.”

  “You do not think that any more than I do, Holmes. I have quartered the entire park, all eighty-odd hectares of it. If he were anywhere hereabouts, I would have found him. Nor would he have departed without leaving me some indication why and whither – unless he had no choice in the matter.”

  “Did you not look inside the camp?”

  “I did not. I called to him from out here, and when there was no reply, I commenced my search of the park.”

  “Perhaps you should go in and see for yourself.”

  “See what?”

  “There is a mark upon the ground. It could be some sign from Umslopogaas as to his current whereabouts, a clue which he is confident you, and only you, are able to interpret.”

  Quatermain dismounted and entered the camp. Reemerging a few moments later, he said, “You mea
n that pattern of circles and triangle?”

  “Yes. You know its significance?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.” Quatermain accompanied the remark with a shake of his head.

  “It isn’t some witch’s sign, by any chance?” I offered.

  “None that I am familiar with. But that is not to say that Umslopogaas was not taken from the camp by unconventional means.”

  “What other means might be there be beyond the conventional?”

  “For you to ask such a thing, Doctor, after our recent conversation, suggests you have not been paying attention.”

  “He has been magicked away? Spirited elsewhere by sorcery?”

  “I am minded to think so. In which case, maybe the symbol did play a role in that. It may be some occult pictogram as yet unknown to me.”

  “But to what end?” I said with more than a touch of anguish. “However it was done, what does kidnapping Umslopogaas achieve?”

  Quatermain grimaced. “To create a hostage? To curb my involvement in this affair? To torment me? Perhaps all three. It is a move calculated to hobble me, that much is clear. Cripple me, even.”

  “There, at least, we are in accord, Quatermain,” said Holmes. “The method of Umslopogaas’s abduction is open to dispute but the purpose is plain. It is a message: ‘Back down, Allan Quatermain. Leave things be, or else.’ Will you heed it?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Holmes,” the great hunter snapped. “Of course not. Umslopogaas would not wish me to. He would be furious if I allowed his predicament to compromise my actions in any way. He would rather die.”

  From what I knew of the Zulu, this seemed a fair assessment. Umslopogaas’s devotion to Quatermain was unswerving to the point of self-sacrifice. I wondered whether Quatermain knew how lucky he was to have such a loyal, dependable friend.

  “Our first priority,” Holmes said, “is establishing where Umslopogaas has got to and how to retrieve him.”

  “I am glad you said that,” said Quatermain. “Any ideas?”

  “None as yet. You?”

  “None either, but I can at least reconstruct his movements up to a certain point. I know that when Umslopogaas stepped out of the thicket, his tread was wary. The way his feet have crushed the grass stems and the close distance between his footprints all imply as much. He went some dozen or so paces that way, northward. Thereafter he began to run, with that long-legged, easy, loping stride which enables a Zulu to cover huge distances at a stretch while conserving his energy. After a few hundred yards he joined an asphalt pathway, whereupon it becomes impossible to know what became of him. Even I cannot track spoor on a bituminous surface. Skills like mine are rendered impotent by certain features of the modern world.”