“You have paddles sorted out, Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suggest you use them. The beast is following us into the water!”
To their horror, the monster waded out to its knees and stood watching the rowboat. Conan Doyle slipped the oars into the rattly oarlocks and began to row, pulling with all his strength. With each stroke, the heavy rowboat, riding perilously low in the water, plowed clumsily ahead. As they moved farther out, the monster and the shore disappeared in the murk. Soon Conan Doyle found himself rowing blindly into a featureless void. Finally, he ceased his efforts and raised the dripping oars, catching his breath as he strained to look around. “Can’t see a blessed thing. I have no idea what direction I’m rowing in.”
“We’re in the very middle of the Thames. I fear we could be run over by a steamer.”
“I doubt it. No captain is mad enough to venture out in this fog.”
“And yet here we are, seasoned sailors, out for a moonlight paddle.”
“Look about, Oscar. I need a point of reference. A church steeple. A streetlamp. Anything.”
As if obliging, the moon slid from behind a scrim of cloud, lighting the circle of water about them.
“I still see nothing,” Wilde said. “Do you know which direction we’re heading?”
“If I keep the moon to my right shoulder, we should reach the west bank of the Thames.”
“Or row all the way to the channel.”
Conan Doyle fell to the oars and pulled with all his strength. Soon he lacked any breath to argue, locked into a rhythmic pulling at the oars. Overhead, the moon sailed through thickening clouds, vanishing and reappearing. Wilde crouched in the back of the boat, eyes sifting the fog. Finally, he announced, “Arthur! I see something! Keep going. Straight ahead.”
Conan Doyle pulled until his arms and shoulders burned with fatigue; he lifted the oars momentarily to look for himself. “Yes. I see it, too. I think we’ve done it. I think we’ve reached the far shore!”
“And look, there’s someone there!”
Wilde stood up in the rocking boat and waved both arms. “Hallooooo! Can you hear us? Hallooo!”
The boat drifted closer to shore and a moment later both men cried out in horror.
“It’s him!”
In the drifting fog, Conan Doyle had rowed in a huge circle and brought them back to the precise place they set off from. Now he wrestled with the oars again, paddling backward with one and forward with the other to spin the boat.
“Look!” Wilde shouted.
As they watched, the dead man waded farther into the Thames. Knee deep. Waist Deep. Chest Deep. A final plunging step and the gruesome face vanished beneath the black water.
The two men stared at the surface of the river with anticipatory dread.
Flat water. Calm. Silence.
“Thank goodness,” Wilde exclaimed, “the thing has drowned itself!”
A sudden commotion of bubbles broke the surface. And then something burst up from the water, arms flailing like steamboat paddles, driving straight at them.
“My God,” Conan Doyle said. “It can swim!” He snatched up the oars and heaved, rowing for all he was worth. Slowly, gradually, the swimming figure dropped farther and farther behind. Abruptly, the swimming stopped and the monster sank beneath the surface.
“It’s gone under. Surely this time it has drowned?”
They watched the surface. A few stray bubbles broke here and there and then … nothing.
“I think you’re right, Oscar. I think this time it has—”
Something exploded in the water beside the boat. A pair of hands latched onto the gunwale, tipping the rowboat precipitously as a waterlogged shape began to drag itself aboard.
“Look out!”
“It’s climbing in!”
With no other weapon to hand, Conan Doyle struggled to wrestle an oar from its oarlock. As it came loose, the monster already had an arm and a leg inside the boat. He swung the oar with all his might. It connected with the creature’s head with a hand-wringing WHACK but failed to slow it down. The sodden form flopped into the boat and struggled to its feet. Conan Doyle shifted to an overhand grip and brought the oar crashing down on the monster’s head. THUD! It was a mighty blow and the creature staggered backward, off balance. Conan Doyle flipped his grip, holding the oar like a lance. Wilde guessed his intent and latched hold. With their combined weight, they speared the blade into the monster’s chest and pushed with everything they had. The monster let out a bestial roar and toppled backward over the gunwale, cannonballing into the Thames and sending up a huge geyser of water.
The two friends stood trembling in the middle of the wildly pitching boat, looking at the dark water with dread anticipation.
Silence.
A few stray bubbles. And then nothing.
“I struck it two good blows about the head,” Conan Doyle said. “Surely it’s done for—”
There was a tremendous crash and a seismic shudder as something drove up through the rotten timbers of the hull and a hand clamped upon Conan Doyle’s ankle with a bone-crushing grip. Water gushed into the boat through the hole.
Conan Doyle shouted with pain and tried to prise the fingers loose, but the iron grip was unbreakable. “Oscar, it has me!”
Wilde snatched up the dropped oar and swung at the monster’s hand. The blade missed, smashing into Conan Doyle’s shin, making him bellow with pain.
The heavy boat began to rapidly fill with water and Conan Doyle knew it would soon sink.
“We’re sinking, Oscar. It will likely let go of me once we go under. You must swim for it. Cast off your coat, it will only drag you down.”
“My coat? This coat? Never!”
“Don’t be a fool man! Don’t drown for the sake of vanity!”
“I can think of no nobler cause to die for!”
“Get ready to jump and remember to keep your mouth closed. The river here is rank with every form of filth and poison.”
“I shall be sure to keep your sage advice in mind whilst I am drowning.”
Conan Doyle and Wilde continued to grapple and pull at the monster’s fingers, but its death-grip was inhuman.
Soon, black Thames water surged over the gunwales and the boat filled with water. At the last second, Wilde leapt and struggled to swim away from the sinking boat. He looked back to see Conan Doyle’s agonized face as the boat dragged him beneath the water. Huge bubbles erupted for long moments, gradually thinning to a trickle, and finally stopped.
Wilde was suddenly and terribly alone in the water. Conan Doyle had drowned.
The water was stunningly cold. The Irishman flailed toward the shore but the heavy coat billowed out behind like a sea anchor, pulling him under. Reluctantly, he opened his arms, shrugged his shoulders and let the river take the coat. Wilde had not been completely honest: he could swim after a fashion. After ten minutes of flailing and splashing he slogged up from the river onto the mud and vomited up a gutful of vile water before collapsing to gag and choke.
“Arthur,” he wheezed, lying in a waterlogged puddle. “My poor dear friend. Oh, Arthur.”
He had been lying there, gathering himself for several minutes, when he heard a splash. He raised his dripping head from the muck and looked back at the river. To his amazement, something glimmered on the surface, a foaming of bubbles. And then he saw the head of a swimmer break the surface.
Wilde clambered unsteadily to his feet. The swimmer was moving slowly, methodically toward shore. But was it man or monster?
“Arthur?” he called out, both hopeful and fearful lest it not be. The swimming shape drew closer. “Arthur! Is that you? Please be you. It looks like you. Follow my voice! This way! Keep swimming! You can do it!”
The swimmer came on in a slow but steady breaststroke. The bobbing head intermittently vanishing as it sank and rose, sank and rose. But then Wilde suddenly had his doubts. He stopped calling. Took several nervous steps away from the water. By
now the swimmer had reached the shallows and a sodden human figure dragged itself upright, water streaming from its clothes.
“Arthur … is that you? Please, say something.”
The shadowy figure staggered up from the reeking Thames and onto the muddy shore in a series of lurching steps and collapsed at Wilde’s feet. Although barely recognizable, his hair matted with riverweed and filth, it was, indeed, Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Arthur!” Wilde said, falling to his knees and embracing his friend. “I feared you had drowned. The monster had you in its grip. How did you escape?”
Breathless and gasping, Conan Doyle opened his hand to reveal a tiny silver pocketknife. “My father gave me this on my tenth birthday. I keep it in my pocket at all times. It is very sharp. I held my breath as the boat went under. Then my knowledge of anatomy served me well. I reached down and, by feel alone, severed the tendons of the creature’s fingers one-by-one. Even a monster with tremendous strength must have tendons to grip something. As I cut through the last tendon, the grip went slack. I broke free and floated to the surface, though I was on my last breath.”
“Well done, Arthur. You have destroyed it.”
Conan Doyle looked at his friend with sudden concern. “No, Oscar, I did not destroy it. The monster’s arm was thrust through the timbers of the hull. I assumed the heavy boat dragged it to the bottom of the Thames.”
“Then it’s not dead?”
Both men looked up at the sound of splashing. The monster had also swum to shore, and now it stood up in the shallows, water sluicing from the ragged clothing. It paused a moment, as if gathering its dreadful inertia, and then shambled up the beach toward them.
“Apparently not,” Conan Doyle said, dragging himself to his feet. He looked about for a weapon and snatched up a heavy lump of waterlogged driftwood and ran down to meet it, shouting a kind of battle cry. As the creature came sloshing up from the water, the Scotsman swung with all his might and brought the driftwood club crashing down on its head with a mighty thud. Vertebrae cracked, kinking the head upon its neck and staggering the monster. But then it snarled and lunged at Conan Doyle, grabbing him by the coat front and flinging him away a dozen feet. He crashed heavily to the ground driving the air from his lungs, momentarily stunning him. Before he could recover, the monster was upon him. One hand clamped about his throat and began to squeeze. The second hand fumbled to gain a grip, but the severed tendons had rendered the flapping fingers useless. Still the grip of the monster’s single hand was crushing and Conan Doyle found himself being throttled to death.
WHACK! Wilde had recovered the chunk of driftwood and brought it down upon the monster’s head. The blow would have killed a living man, but the creature scarcely noticed. Conan Doyle’s face purpled as the relentless grip tightened and he struggled vainly to pry loose the fingers.
“Oscar!” he wheezed in a strangulated voice. “Hit him!”
THWACK! Wilde’s club came down again, crunching vertebrae, kinking the monster’s neck in the opposite direction.
Conan Doyle was gargling up froth. His vision began to darken and his fingers grew clumsy as his oxygen-starved brain began to sink into oblivion.
THUD! Wilde brought the club down a third time and the chunk of driftwood broke in two. The Irishman looked around and despaired. The foreshore was barren, with nothing left to use as a weapon.
Conan Doyle’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. The world began to recede down a dark tunnel. A hundred miles away, his hands flailed uselessly.
Suddenly Wilde thrust something in front of the monster’s face. The creature froze. A convulsion shook the large frame. The grip loosened as the fingers relaxed their hold on Conan Doyle’s throat. It snatched the object from Wilde’s hand, rose stiffly, and stood cradling the thing in its hands, brows hunched stupidly as it studied the object. And then the face grew soft. The posture slackened. The monster threw back its head, opened its mouth, and released a mournful cry of utter desolation.
Conan Doyle struggled to sit up, choking for air. He looked from the monster to Wilde in amazement.
“What…” he asked in a ruined voice “… what did you do, Oscar?”
“I showed it the photograph of Vicente’s sister. Apparently, it still retains some human memories.”
The monster stood gazing at the photograph, moaning, the mouth hanging slack and drooling. And then it turned and slouched away, howling like a beaten dog, its prey suddenly forgotten.
Wilde helped Conan Doyle stagger to his feet and the two friends slogged through the mud to a nearby road.
“What do we do now, Arthur? We are beaten, bruised, and soaked to the skin. We have no money. No carriage. And we have barely survived being attacked by a monster.”
Conan Doyle watched the twisted silhouette shamble away in the fog and a spark lit in his eye.
“What else can we do? We must follow it.”
CHAPTER 27
A PLEASANT NIGHT CRUISE UPON THE THAMES
The pursuit went on for miles, Conan Doyle and Wilde shadowed the stuttering figure from a distance. Afraid to follow too close. Afraid to lag too far behind in the dense fog. They moved at a steady jog that kept their bodies warm, although now and then each would be racked with a convulsive shiver.
“Explain something to me, Arthur. We just barely escaped from that thing with our lives. Why are we now pursuing it?”
“In the hopes it will lead us to its lair.”
The monster strode on, untiring and indefatigable, while the two friends struggled to keep up. Finally, under the grinding accumulation of footsore miles, both men began to flag as the monster gradually outpaced them. As they approached Westminster, it had shrunk to a tiny figure in the distance. And then the fog thickened and erased it from sight.
“Gone … it’s gone,” Conan Doyle admitted wearily. “We have lost it.” The two stumbled to a standstill.
“What now?” Wilde asked. “There is another monster loose in London … and this time I refer to the mad marquess.”
Conan Doyle looked around. A flyer plastered on a nearby wall caught his eye:
The Scottish author frowned. His shoulders slumped in resignation. “You and I have done our utmost, Oscar, but this is beyond us. I think this is a matter best handled by Cypher and his people.” Remembering something, he fumbled in his top pocket and drew out the small envelope the little man had given him, thoroughly dampened from their dip in the Thames.
“What’s that?” Wilde asked.
“Cypher gave this to me. He said to only use it in the direst situation. I think we have reached that juncture.” He tore off one end of the soggy envelope and drew something out.
Conan Doyle looked at his friend with a sour expression.
“You appear far from happy, Arthur. What is it?”
“Two steamer tickets.”
Wilde’s face grew grief-stricken. “Dear God! Not the Thames, again? Not twice in one night!”
* * *
The paddleboat Poseidon was tied up at Lambeth Palace Pier, but the decks were deserted, the wheelhouse dark.
“No one about,” Wilde said, and made to walk away. “We shall just have to try elsewhere.”
“No. Wait. Look.” Conan Doyle clapped a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder and pointed to the smoke purling from the flared smokestack. “The boilers are lit. That means someone is aboard.”
Conan Doyle banged on the wheelhouse door with the meat of his fist. After a pause, the door flung open and a gruff bearded man in a salt-stained uniform leaned out, jaws working at the mouthful of tobacco he was chewing. He gave the two friends a wire brushing up and down with his flinty eyes. “Yeah? Watcha want?”
“From the faded salt stain on your uniform and the rum on your breath, I’d wager you are an ex-navy man and currently the captain of this vessel.”
The man’s head tilted back, warily. “What’s it to you?”
Conan Doyle flourished the tickets under the captain’s nose. He took o
ne look and choked down his mouthful of ’baccy, sobering instantly. He turned and bellowed down the stairs, “On deck, you lot. We’re casting off.”
With its boilers constantly shoveled with coal, the boat soon made a head of steam. Minutes later, Conan Doyle and Wilde stood in a pair of smelly and scratchy uniforms the captain had rustled up. Both men had blankets around their shoulders and sipped at battered metal mugs that held Barbados rum spiked with a tiny splash of tea.
“I am nostalgic for sensation in my feet,” Wilde said, shivering beneath his blanket. “I feel as waterlogged as that wretched rowboat.”
Conan Doyle did not answer. He could not tear his gaze from the fog cleaving about the prow as the steamer churned ahead, shafts of light from its powerful carbide lights probing the fog ahead. “I feel as though I am sailing through the clouds in one of Jules Verne’s aerial contrivances.”
One of the steamer’s crew moved to the prow of the boat. He was equipped with a signaling light and sent out a series of flashes into the darkness. Moments later he was answered by pulses of light emanating from the dark silhouette of Tower Bridge.
“What on earth is that chap doing?” Wilde asked.
“He is semaphoring a coded message made up of long and short flashes. If you notice, the message is acknowledged and then repeated on up the line, from bridge to bridge. Cypher will have word of our coming long before the boat arrives.”
Finally, the skeletal shape of a jetty loomed from the fog. The captain shouted to the man in the wheelhouse, who threw levers back and forth. Poseidon roared and shuddered, releasing a whoosh of spray as one set of paddle wheels slowed, and then one reversed with the other paddle wheels powered forward, spinning the boat about so that it paralleled and gently snugged up to the dock. Waiting crewmen, agile as monkeys, leapt from the boat and cinched ropes around bollards.
A diminutive figure stood waiting on the dock’s worn planking—Cypher. He was flanked, as always, by two large figures in black coats and bowler hats—Dandelion and Burdock.
The Dead Assassin Page 25