Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust

by James Lovegrove

  “Who?” the witch-doctor said. “Who called me a pet?”

  “Van Hoek. I had it from Umslopogaas himself. When Van Hoek confronted him at Silasville, he threatened to unleash his ‘pet’ upon him. Meaning, quite clearly, you.”

  “I never said any such thing,” Van Hoek protested. “It’s a load of blerrie nonsense.”

  Zikali huffed impatiently. “That’s enough from you, Mr Holmes. Another word and Mr Van Hoek will silence you for good. Now watch, Macumazahn. Watch as I slice your friend to ribbons. I want you to see him suffer. I rejoice, knowing that that will be a source of suffering to you, just like your son’s death.”

  Umslopogaas’s face was impassive, horribly so. He had no notion of the torment that was to come.

  “Why would I make up such a detail?” said Holmes. “If you know anything about me, Zikali, you will know that I pride myself in the accuracy of my observations and my retention of facts. It would seem that to Van Hoek you are little better than a dog. Obedient, useful, something he can trust to do what is required, but no more than that.”

  “I swear, Mr Holmes, one more word from you…”

  “But I have to ask myself,” Holmes went on, “who really rules the roost in your partnership. You are effectively telling Van Hoek what to do here. How does that sit with you, Van Hoek? Not comfortably, I should imagine.”

  “You can just shut your mouth, Holmes,” the Boer snapped. “I’ll say it again, Zikali, I never called you a pet. That is a fiction.”

  And it was a fiction. Umslopogaas had told us nothing of the sort during his account of his brief sojourn at Silasville. Holmes was bluffing.

  What I could not see was how this ploy, if successful, might change anything. Zikali was hell-bent on inflicting death-by-a-thousand-cuts on Umslopogaas, and Van Hoek was holding the rest of us at bay with that rifle of his, which I recognised as a Mauser, doubtless the same Mauser he had used to snipe at us in Kensington Gardens. Tweaking the noses of these two, as Holmes was doing, would not deflect them in any way from their plans. It would surely have the opposite effect, inciting them to greater barbarism.

  “Shoot me then, Van Hoek,” Holmes said. “That is what Zikali wants you to do. He has made it quite plain. Why are you hesitating? Is it that you will not be ordered about by a lesser creature? I am surprised, frankly, that you let him talk to you like that at all. He has ideas above his station.”

  “Final warning,” the Boer growled.

  The Mauser was still trained on Allan Quatermain, but Van Hoek would only have to swing it a few degrees to bring Holmes into his sights.

  “Just do it,” Zikali said. “I am keen to get on with dismantling Umslopogaas. I cannot abide all these distractions.”

  The wolves encircling us seemed to echo the sentiment. They were restive again, sensitive to the tensions between us humans. A couple of them pawed at the ground, while a third swung its head from side to side agitatedly.

  That was when it dawned on me what Holmes was really up to. Antagonisation was his goal, but not his only one.

  The wolves were under Zikali’s supervision, but his hold over them was far from complete. Resentment simmered in their wolfish hearts. Unlike their canine cousins, they could never be fully tamed or domesticated. The wild was too strong in them.

  All it would take was for one of them, perhaps the head of the pack, to shake off the conditioning that Zikali had put in place. Then the entire pack might mutiny beyond the witch-doctor’s power to check them. At the very least it would cause a distraction and provide an opening we could exploit.

  “How humiliating it must be for you, Van Hoek,” I said, joining in the needling. “Zikali is half your size and of a race whom your kind despise. And the reverse is true for you, Zikali. It galls you, does it not, to be beholden to one of the white men who have overrun your homeland and plundered its resources. How can you be in cahoots with him? Is he worthy of your allegiance? I think not.”

  “That’s enough!” Van Hoek bellowed. “From both of you. Damn English. Always talking. Always maligning. I shouldn’t be surprised if one day we Boers wage another war against you uitlanders. You accuse us of looking down our noses at the black man, but you treat us with the same condescension. You think we’re backwards, pig-ignorant oafs. That will change, mark my words.”

  “Van Hoek,” said Zikali, “stop haranguing them and just kill them. Not Quatermain, only the other two. Quatermain gets to live to see Umslopogaas die.”

  “Don’t you bark orders at me,” the Boer rejoined. “Show some respect. Remember who you are and who I am.”

  “You,” said the witch-doctor, “are not my master, and I am not your slave.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  The wolves were more jittery than ever. Quatermain seemed to have twigged to Holmes’s scheme, too, for I could see him tensing. His legs were braced, his whole body quivering like a greyhound’s. When the moment came – if it came – he was poised to act, and act fast.

  “I should have left you in that river,” Van Hoek said. “It would have made my life far easier.”

  “It would certainly have saved you from having to deal with the consequences of his vengeful impulses,” said Holmes. “All of this is down to Zikali. Had he not killed Harry Quatermain, you would not now be having to clean up his mess. You would still be sitting pretty at Silasville. You would not have had to journey all the way to England and murder Bradford Wade. Wade’s death must be preying on your conscience, Van Hoek. Zikali has saddled you with a burden of guilt you will be carrying for the rest of your days. I am sure you have no qualms about killing a black man, but a white man? Even if he is an Englishman…”

  “I killed Englishmen in the war. Plenty.”

  “Wade was different. It was not in the heat of battle. It was a premeditated, cold-blooded act, and you had to do it yourself because Zikali for some reason could not. Zikali was unable to enter Wade’s flat in order to administer the Devil’s Dust, and I can venture a guess why. The protective fetish Wade bought.”

  “Now, that much is true,” Van Hoek said jeeringly. “I told Zikali I’d seen it through the window, while I was reconnoitring.”

  “And it worked. It hindered you, did it not, Zikali? It frightened you off.”

  “Not in the least,” said the witch-doctor, but his tone of voice, and a slight ducking of the head, told a different story.

  “You feared whatever power is contained within it. Some wizard you are, to be repelled by such a paltry trinket.”

  “No!”

  Zikali screeched the negative, and at that selfsame instant one of the wolves darted forward, breaking rank. Its target was the witch-doctor.

  Zikali let out a wail of alarm. The gourd flew to his lips and he puffed hard into it.

  The wolf halted in its tracks, but its fangs were bared and its eyes regarded Zikali with barely mitigated animosity. This, I thought, must be the head of the pack, and it harboured enmity towards this human who had usurped its primacy.

  Frantically Zikali blew into the gourd again, and the wolf, with reluctance, backed away, its tail slung low.

  At that moment, spying his chance, Quatermain acted. While all attention was on the rogue wolf, he somersaulted across the ground, snatching up his elephant gun from its resting place between him and Van Hoek. As he came up out of the roll, he took aim.

  The Boer gaped in astonishment.

  The gun thundered.

  Van Hoek had a head. Then he did not have a head.

  At point-blank range, the double-eight cartridge simply obliterated everything above the neck. Blood sprayed in a fine mist. The Boer’s decapitated body teetered, still clutching the Mauser. Then, buckling at the knees, it fell.

  Instantly, the wolves turned tail and fled. It seemed they had had quite enough. The noise and bloodshed within the clearing were all too much for their sensibilities. They were, by nature, wary creatures. They could have attacked us but instead, fully aware now of the harm we h
umans might cause them, they adopted the more prudent tactic of leaving us be.

  Quatermain spun, locking his sights on Zikali.

  The witch-doctor, however, had taken refuge behind Umslopogaas. Quatermain’s friend now stood between him and his target, and Zikali, reaching up with both arms, was holding Groan-Maker’s blade poised at Umslopogaas’s neck. A trickle of blood leaked down from the axe’s cutting edge.

  “A flex of the wrist and I open his vein,” he said. “Umslopogaas will not die the death I had planned for him, Macumazahn, but he will most assuredly die!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  IMPASSE NO. 2

  We were again at an impasse. No longer was there Van Hoek with his rifle pinning Holmes, Quatermain and me in position, but Zikali still had the upper hand. He could slash open Umslopogaas’s jugular with ease. He need not apply much more pressure to the blade, and Umslopogaas’s lifeblood would spray out uncontainably.

  “Zikali, I implore you,” said Quatermain, “in the name of whatever cordiality we have shared in the past, do not do this. You have hurt me enough. You must know this. Harry’s death is like a hole at the very heart of me, one that will never heal. I will carry the ache of it to my grave. Do not add Umslopogaas to your tally of victims, not in my name. Take me instead. I will willingly surrender to you, in return for you letting him go free, unharmed.”

  “Hee hee! Macumazahn begs. Macumazahn pleads. Once more does the Opener-of-Roads outmanoeuvre ‘the man who gets up in the middle of the night’.”

  “See? As a gesture of earnest, I am putting down my gun.” Quatermain suited the action to the word.

  Meanwhile, Holmes had dropped to a crouch. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him stealthily scoop something up from the ground and swiftly rise again. Zikali, peeking at Quatermain around Umslopogaas’s hip, failed to notice.

  “You may do with me as you wish,” said Quatermain to Zikali, raising his hands aloft. “If the price of Umslopogaas’s life is mine, it is one I shall gladly pay.”

  I darted a glance at Holmes. He was holding my revolver casually by his side, shielding it from Zikali’s line of sight with his leg. His gaze was fixed upon Umslopogaas.

  Looking at Umslopogaas myself, I realised that his eyes were clearer than before. Some semblance of sense had returned to him. Perhaps the hypnotic concoction with which Zikali had dosed him was at last wearing off, or else the report from Van Hoek’s rifle and the yet more deafening report from Quatermain’s elephant gun had succeeded in stirring him from his stupor. Whether it was the one reason, the other, or a combination of both, Umslopogaas was gradually coming round – and he and Holmes were sharing some exchange of confidences through the eyes alone.

  Holmes gave the tiniest of nods. Umslopogaas answered with a barely detectable blink. Between them they had come to an understanding, and I had a horrible feeling I knew what it was.

  Sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed when Holmes abruptly raised the revolver and shot Umslopogaas.

  The bullet smacked into the meat of Umslopogaas’s thigh, knocking his leg out from under him. The Zulu toppled to the ground, exposing a startled Zikali to view.

  Holmes loosed off a second shot immediately. This one caught the dwarfish witch-doctor in the shoulder, the force of it spinning him around on the spot. His shrill shriek of pain was ear-piercing.

  A third bullet hit him in the rump. Zikali was propelled flat onto his front, Groan-Maker tumbling from his grasp. He writhed in the leaf litter, emitting a series of whimpering mewls, which, coming from anyone but him, would have wrung pity from me.

  Somehow he managed to regain his feet. He was bent over, bleeding profusely from his two wounds. His features were contorted with as much rage as pain. His chest heaved.

  “A curse upon you!” he cried. “A curse upon you all! I spit upon you, Englishmen! A plague be on your land! May my blood envenom your soil! May Umkulu-kulu bring fire and destruction to all you hold dear! May you never know a moment’s peace in your lives! May you perish without off spring, unmourned, unloved, as miserable as paupers!”

  “For heaven’s sake, Zikali,” said Quatermain, retrieving his gun, “will you just simply die.”

  Before he could empty the second barrel at the witch-doctor, however, a sleek shape darted out from the trees.

  It was one of the wolves – the same one, I thought, that had launched an abortive attack on Zikali a short while earlier. Now it charged towards the witch-doctor with silent, sinuous grace, clearly bent on finishing what it had started.

  At the sight of the wolf, Zikali reached for the gourd at his wrist, only to discover that the hard, globular fruit had cracked open when he fell. As a whistle it was now useless. He had no power to rein in the wolf, although I suspect that even if the whistle had been intact, it would have done him no good. He was wounded and in distress, after all, and there is nothing that arouses a carnivore’s appetite more than injured prey. The marauding beast would have paid no heed to his commands.

  A look of stark terror came over Zikali’s face as this very same realisation struck home. He turned on his heel and hobbled towards the cave. Somehow he believed he might find sanctuary there.

  To his credit, he almost gained the cave mouth before the wolf overtook him. It pounced, catching him by the throat in its jaws and bringing him to the ground.

  As Zikali was dragged down, the remaining wolves poured into the clearing. They converged on the witch-doctor, and at that point I averted my gaze. Loathsome though Zikali was, I had no desire to watch what followed.

  Instead, I listened. The cacophony of crunching and rending and screaming lasted a full minute, and when it stopped and I finally dared look again, it was to see two of the wolves playing tug-of-war with some unidentifiable body part while the rest, their muzzles smeared and clotted with blood, gorged themselves on various wet, ragged hunks of flesh strewn over the ground.

  In the interim, Quatermain and Holmes had gathered up Umslopogaas and were holding him erect between them. Umslopogaas, though in pain and barely conscious, had nonetheless retained the presence of mind to collect his beloved Groan-Maker from where Zikali had dropped it.

  “Come, Watson,” Holmes said. “Let us make good our escape while the wolves are otherwise occupied. They may eat their fill of Zikali and be too heavy-bellied to pursue us. They may, on the other hand, consider one so small merely the hors d’oeuvres, whereby we become the main course.”

  I needed no further urging.

  With haste we put the clearing behind us, and I for one was glad to see the back of it. I promised myself there and then that I would never again enter Epping Forest, not for love or money. It is a vow I have kept to this very day.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE AND THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC

  Sherlock Holmes looked up from his chemistry bench, where he had been busy for some while.

  “It is as I thought,” he said. “See?”

  He held up a small ceramic bowl, the interior of which was lined with a silvery-black deposit. Quatermain and I had just watched him suspend the bowl upside down over a test tube filled with a greyish solution. He had used a match to ignite the gas which the solution was giving off and had allowed the resultant flame to stain the inside of the bowl.

  “The colour and intensity of the residue you are looking at confirms my theory,” he explained. “I have subjected a sample of the table salt to the Marsh Test, adding zinc and hydrogen sulphide. When oxidised by fire, the fumes arising from the solution become water vapour and arsine gas. The latter, as it cools, sublimes to leave this distinctive silvery-black stain. There can be no question about it. The salt contains the Devil’s Dust, and the Devil’s Dust is arsenic trioxide.”

  The sample came from a salt cellar from Mrs Biddulph’s house. The accompanying pepper pot, the salt cellar’s near twin, also contained arsenic trioxide. Holmes estimated that the ratio of condiment to Devil’s Dust in each instance was two parts to one.
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br />   “At such a concentration, a liberal sprinkling of either the salt or the pepper onto his mutton stew would have been more than enough to kill Bradford Wade. Did you know that the French used to call arsenic poudre de succession – inheritance powder? Before James Marsh developed his test it was a favourite of poisoners because it was odourless and tasteless. So I think we may once and for all discount any possibility of wizardly doings on the part of Zikali of Black Kloof. If the Devil’s Dust is anything to go by, his magic was mere parlour tricks, full of misdirection and sleight of hand, along with a smattering of pharmacology. More doctor than witch, one might say.”

  “You are wrong,” said Quatermain.

  “You still maintain that he was genuinely a sorcerer?”

  “All I can tell you is that in Africa I saw Zikali perform what can only be called miracles – him and others of his ilk.”

  “Yet there is nothing he did while in England that cannot be accounted for in rational, scientific terms.”

  “What if it is a matter of perspective?” I said. “That which to the scientifically-minded is provable by science is, to the mind of someone who lives a life steeped in magical lore, magic. The typical Englishman believes in material things more than he does in magic, therefore magic does not work for him.”

  “You mean Zikali was unable to use true witchcraft while in England,” Quatermain said, taking up my theme, “because the English aversion towards such phenomena prevented it? Perhaps. In Africa, things are very different, that much is certain. If only Umslopogaas were conscious right now. He would back up my argument strenuously.”

  The Zulu was at present lying in my bed, still under sedation after the procedure of having an Eley’s No. 2 round extricated from his leg. Holmes had placed the shot with extraordinary precision so that the bullet struck neither bone nor artery and lodged in the muscle near the surface. Removing it had been much less tricky than removing the bullet Starkey had fired into Quatermain’s arm, and somewhat less excruciating for the patient, though still far from pleasant. I expected Umslopogaas to make a full recovery.