Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust

by James Lovegrove

  “How far could he have travelled, running at such a pace?”

  “Assuming it has been one hour, eight or nine miles. Perhaps three times that if he was drawn away from the camp not long after I left to come and see you.”

  “Twenty-odd miles,” I said, both impressed and glum.

  “Without stopping,” Quatermain said. “It would be nothing to him. The distressing truth is that Umslopogaas could be well outside the limits of Greater London by now.”

  “It makes sense to me to restrict the search to London itself, for the time being,” said Holmes. “It puts a practical limit on the scope of the task. Only once we have ascertained beyond all doubt that Umslopogaas is not in the city should we consider expanding the radius. I shall apply myself to the problem for the rest of the day. What about you, Quatermain? What are your plans?”

  “With respect to your methods, Mr Holmes, I am going to look for Umslopogaas in my own way.”

  “Applying your tracking skills, no doubt.”

  “Not as such.” Quatermain’s manner was evasive.

  “If not that, then what?”

  “That is my affair.”

  “You are not prepared to elaborate?” said Holmes. “We may be thinking along the same lines, after all, and it would be better to apportion out our resources rather than each find himself doubling the other.”

  “I very much doubt you will be doing what I will be.”

  “As you wish. Perhaps, then, come the evening, we can meet up and compare notes.”

  “I am not against that idea.”

  A rendezvous was set for eight o’clock at Baker Street, and Holmes and I made our goodbyes, although not before I had handed Quatermain the details of Remus’s owner and had exacted from him a reassurance that the horse would be returned where it belonged, namely Shipley’s Yard, near Waterloo Station. His somewhat cavalier attitude towards property and propriety might be all very well in the more lawless corners of Africa, but in civilisation there were certain strictures one abided by, and even Allan Quatermain was not exempt from them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE ANGLER’S TALE

  Back at Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes summoned and then despatched the Baker Street irregulars, sending them off to all points of the compass to scrounge up sightings of a man matching the Zulu’s description.

  While waiting for them to return, Holmes sent two cables. One was to Inspector Lestrade on the subject of Umslopogaas. It yielded nothing of any consequence. The Met official furnished a reply, the terse wording of which conveyed depths of exasperation:

  Unless African gentleman runs amok with axe no crime committed. Will instruct officers to keep eye out nonetheless. Also alert for possibility of wild hippopotami on the loose.

  “Ah, Lestrade,” Holmes said, addressing him as if he were present. “Would that you put half as much effort into your work as you do into these sardonic dismissals of yours. England would be a far safer place. Still, I am sure you felt it worthwhile spending an additional sixpence above the basic shilling for those last few extra words. ‘Wild hippopotami on the loose’ indeed!”

  As to the other telegram, Holmes did not vouchsafe to me the identity of the recipient and I knew better than to ask. When he was being secretive, it would be easier to get a Trappist monk to open up and tell all than he.

  For about an hour afterward he sat at his chemistry bench, using his microscope to examine the specimen of soil he had taken from the camp. Just as he was packing away the instrument, the first of the irregulars came back.

  The lad was rueful. “Nothing, Mr Holmes,” said he. “Couldn’t find a single soul what has seen a Zulu with an axe.”

  One after another the other irregulars traipsed in. All reported a similar lack of success – all save Wiggins, their putative leader. He brought with him a man who had a story to tell.

  At first our guest was hesitant, turning his hat round and round in his hands by the brim.

  “Go on,” Wiggins encouraged him. “Mr Holmes won’t bite.”

  “I’m told there might be money in this for me,” the man said.

  “I assure you, you will be recompensed for your trouble,” said Holmes. “Speak.”

  The fellow, it transpired, was a keen angler in his spare time, and he told us that, while fishing on the Lea earlier in the day, he had spied a tall black man coming along the bank opposite.

  “Where exactly on the river was this?” Holmes asked.

  “The stretch where it meanders through Hackney Marshes,” the angler replied. “Plenty of trout there, in season. Moment I caught sight of the bloke, I ducked down in the reeds. He just didn’t look the sort you’d want to get on the wrong side of, if you know what I mean. Big, lanky individual like that, and carrying an axe to match. Fair gave me the collywobbles.”

  “I can well imagine. How fast was he going?”

  “Sort of a loping speed. Not quite walking, not quite running. Somewhere in between. Startled as I was,” the angler continued, “I was all the more startled when I saw there was somebody with him. Another of his race.”

  Holmes cocked his head. “Describe this second person.”

  “I didn’t get a clear view through the reeds, only the merest of glimpses, but I can tell you it was a child, sir. A boy, keeping pace with the man. Judging by his height, he could not have been more than five or six years of age. But that wasn’t the queerest thing. The queerest thing was that he was singing.”

  “Singing?”

  “Yes, sir. This funny little repetitive song, in a high-pitched voice. At that distance I could only just hear it, but it sounded strange. Like a lullaby, only none I’m familiar with. I didn’t recognise the tune, nor the language. The other bloke seemed to like it, mind. He was smiling and his eyes were sort of glazed, if you know what I mean. He was going along with the boy, meek as a lamb. It’s a sight I won’t forget, and no mistake. Those two, man and boy, in the middle of Hackney Marshes. I thought there must be a circus nearby or something.”

  Wiggins and the angler left, each richer by a shilling which I, of course, provided.

  “That certainly must have been Umslopogaas,” I remarked.

  “Quite,” said Holmes. “And if our angler’s testimony is reliable – and I have no reason to think otherwise – it places the Zulu at the north-eastern outskirts of the city sometime around mid-afternoon. Frankly it is surprising there have not been a multitude of similar reports. Umslopogaas and Groan-Maker in tandem would make for an unforgettable sight. Seemingly he has been avoiding the main thoroughfares and keeping to backwaters and byways.”

  “And what of the African boy with him? Who do you think that might be?”

  “I confess I have no idea.”

  “Quatermain did suggest that a witch-doctor could be over in England.”

  “Can one be a witch-doctor at the tender age of five or six? It is beyond my scope of expertise, but I doubt it.”

  “What do you make of Umslopogaas’s ‘glazed’ eyes, then?” I said. “It suggests to me some kind of hypnotic state.”

  “He may well have been in a trance, but let us not go further, as Hunter Quatermain might, and call him spellbound.”

  “What if the trance was induced somehow by the child’s song?”

  “Really, this level of speculation benefits no one, Watson. At the very least we should wait until eight o’clock, when Quatermain is due. He may be able to shed more light upon the matter.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A VISION OF HIGHWAYMEN

  The clock chimed the appointed hour with no sign of Quatermain. It was closer on nine when he finally showed up, and immediately it was obvious that something was awry. It was not just his tardiness. A shambling gait and pinkened eyes denoted some form of intoxication, as did his seeming inability to answer a simple question straightforwardly.

  “Quatermain, have you been drinking?” I said.

  “Have I been drinking? No, I have not, Doctor. Not drinking
. But have I been thinking? Oh yes. That I most definitely have. Thinking, and seeing, and imagining.”

  “I am nonplussed. What do you mean?”

  “Mean?” came the distracted reply. “I mean what I mean. What do you mean?”

  “This is a disgrace. Look at the state of you, man. How can you resort to alcohol at a time like this, when your friend is missing, perhaps in peril of his life, and counting on you to come to his rescue?”

  “Rescue. Fescue. Fresco. Best go. Ho! Where was I again? It is all a bit of a haze.”

  “Good grief!” I turned to Holmes. “Whatever shall we do? He is quite useless to us. He is babbling like an idiot. I thought better of him than this.”

  My friend evinced surprising equanimity. “Observe his pupils, Watson,” said he. “Look how dilated they are. I don’t believe Quatermain is drunk at all. I believe he has been partaking once again of Taduki.”

  At the sound of the drug’s name, Quatermain pricked up his ears.

  “Taduki!” he said. “Yes! Sweet, strange, terrible Taduki. It takes me places. It allows me to travel while standing still. It opens doors and crosses boundaries and parts the mists of time. In its embrace I have been transported to past lives, other eras. I have been myself as I do not remember I was, in yesterdays I have never known. Within me have been awoken ancestral memories, so that I seem to inhabit the skin of one or other of my ancient forebears. I have been Shabaka, a nobleman descended from the Ethiopian king of Egypt of that name, half a millennium before Christ. I have been Wi, a caveman in Ice Age times. And now…”

  “Now?” Holmes prompted.

  Quatermain collapsed into a chair. “I have travelled again, but this time not nearly so far back in history. I rode the vapours of Taduki with the specific intent of finding Umslopogaas. I hoped that the herb would grant me a vision of his current location.”

  “And did it?” I asked.

  “Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I am unsure. As the Taduki took effect, I found myself once more perched upon the ladder of my existence, whose every rung is a separate life. I know, I know, Holmes! It is all just so much mystical whimsy to you. Bear with me.”

  Holmes said nothing, but by lighting his clay pipe he seemed to be indicating that he would for now be giving Quatermain the benefit of the doubt, if disputatiously.

  “I descended the ladder,” Quatermain continued, “in that peculiar way which feels like floating and falling at once and certainly is no bodily action. The ladder is suspended, you see, between the Rock of Being and the gates of Eternal Calm. In a realm like that, the physical laws that govern our world no longer apply. There is no inertia or momentum. Even the very notion of ‘up’ or ‘down’ becomes irrelevant.

  “Then I was watching a man, a bold desperado on horseback. He wore a tricorn hat, frock coat and leather britches, and a neckerchief was drawn up around the lower portion of his face to form a mask. I knew that my spirit had formerly dwelled within this form, some century and a half ago. I knew his name to be Tom Chalmers, but that he was known, too, as Raider Tom and was a notorious highwayman.

  “No more was I watching him. Now, through some ghostlike gliding motion, I had become as one with him. I looked out through his gimlet eyes as he surveyed the road beside which he loitered. It was a broad, earthen track that curved through dense woodland, and by the light of a half-moon it gleamed with silvery promise, at least as far as Raider Tom was concerned.

  “Raider Tom had been plying his infamous trade along this stretch of highway in Essex, just to the east of London, for nigh on a decade. An associate of Dick Turpin had he been, and on many an eve had the pair of them roistered together in taverns before sallying forth to hold up coaches and relieve those aboard of their gold and other valuables. Turpin was now dead, hanged in York upon the gallows at Knavesmire, but Tom Chalmers carried on the practice, undeterred by the grisly fate of his friend and fellow highwayman. He knew of no other way of making money. Highway robbery was his living and would surely one day be his dying, as it had been Turpin’s. Tom was resigned to that. Sooner or later his luck would run out and he would be caught, tried and executed. Until then, however, he would continue to plough his crooked furrow.”

  “You speak of this Raider Tom as though he were someone else,” I said. “Yet was he not you, or rather you he?”

  Quatermain offered a wry smile. “It is a queer paradox, Doctor. Under the influence of Taduki, one inhabits one’s past incarnation but feels remote from him at the same time. I could refer to Tom in the first person, but it seems more appropriate to use the third.”

  “I see.”

  Quatermain picked up where he had left off before my interruption. “Tom’s mare, Grey Jenny, stamped uneasily beneath him, her ears twitching. He knew this to be a sign that a carriage was approaching. Jenny’s hearing was acute, far sharper than his. She detected, long before he did, the drum of hooves and clatter of wheels. Her excitement began to mount, as did Tom’s.

  “Round the bend it came, a stagecoach drawn by a team of four. Nor was this just any stagecoach but a mail carrier, and Tom licked his lips at the prospect. He licked them not only from eagerness but to moisten them, for they had all of a sudden gone dry. The coach’s red and gold livery promised loot galore, there being every chance that it was ferrying chests of currency between branches of a bank. There were likely to be passengers also, with wallets and purses fat with travelling money. However, in counterpoint to that, there would be a guard riding up top with the driver – a guard armed with pistol and blunderbuss and ever on the lookout for felons such as Tom.

  “Raider Tom damped down the flutterings of fear. The game, he thought, was more than worth the candle.”

  Quatermain rose and went to the drinks cabinet, where, uninvited, he helped himself to a brandy, which he soused with soda water from the gasogene.

  Whistle wetted, he resumed his seat and his narrative. I was finding the tale oddly enthralling, for all that the authenticity of its provenance was, to say the least, dubious.

  “Tom burst out onto the road as the mail coach thundered towards him. Flintlock in either hand, he raked Grey Jenny’s belly with his rowels so that she rose onto her hindlegs, her forelegs waving. It was pure theatre, and horse seemed as conscious of this as rider was.

  “Then came the time-honoured cry: ‘Stand and deliver!’

  “The mail coach shuddered to a halt, the body of it rocking back upon its leaf springs. Tom levelled one flintlock at the driver’s head. With the other he gestured towards the guard ensconced in the jump seat at the rear.

  “‘Do not raise that blunderbuss, sir,’ said he. ‘Not unless you value your colleague’s life. Toss it thither onto the verge. There’s a good fellow. The pistol likewise. That’s it. There is no need for anyone to die tonight, not if we all remain calm and behave. You know the drill. Anything that’s worth having, hoist it out and deposit it by the roadside. Passengers?’

  “The driver nodded.

  “‘How many?’

  “‘Four.’

  “‘Tell them to lift the blinds, open the door, and drop out their cash, jewels, watches, the lot. Let’s do it nice and slowly. Then we can all be on our way.’

  “The driver relayed Tom’s instructions. There was a pause before the blinds were raised. That delay should have told Tom that all was not as it ought to be. Frightened passengers were, as a rule, only too quick to comply with his demands. Some even seemed to derive a perverse thrill from being robbed by a highwayman and couldn’t wait to do as he told them. It was almost a badge of honour, and it would provide them with an exhilarating anecdote with which to regale friends around the dinner table at a later date.

  “As it transpired, the four passengers in this mail coach were not mere quailing civilians. They were, to a man, Post Office employees, and they were, to a man, armed.

  “The trap was sprung. The passengers leapt out, guns blazing. The guard, too, sprang down from his perch and fired. Over and above the percussive roar
of gunpowder detonating, Tom heard gruff, defiant yells: ‘Got you now, Chalmers!’ and ‘You’ve had this coming a long time, you villain!’

  “Raider Tom got off two good shots with his flintlocks, both balls finding their mark. The two nearest of his opponents fell, never to rise again. The remaining three were still on their feet, however, and Tom had no time to reload. They ran towards him, bringing him within easy range of their pieces.

  “So far Tom was unscathed. A blunderbuss was terribly inaccurate at distance. Up close, by contrast, accuracy was hardly a necessity. The spread of buckshot was such that the weapon had only to be aimed in the general direction of its target to hit it.

  “Tom turned Grey Jenny around and made for the woods. Standing his ground would be futile. Flight was the only option. If fortunate, he might live to rob another day.

  “He was not fortunate. Pain seared his back, so shockingly agonising that he never even heard the blast from the gun. He slumped across Grey Jenny’s neck, feeling as though he had been sundered in twain.

  “The next several minutes were a blur. Tom was dimly aware of Grey Jenny charging through the woods, with him barely clinging on. When sense returned, he was conscious of the pain – it felt as though his lower back were on fire – and also of the warm wetness spreading down his buttocks and thighs, a flood of blood. He knew that he had been dealt a mortal wound. Nothing could save him. Tears stung his eyes, remorse at a life that had been full of turmoil and incident but not, in the final reckoning, well spent. There was little doubt in Tom’s mind that he was destined for an unpleasant afterlife somewhere very hot. He could only hope that his Maker, in His infinite mercy, might find a way to forgive him for his many sins eventually.