The Sign of Fear

by Robert Ryan

  While Watson spoke, they consumed a pot of Empire Blend and two cigarettes apiece. Sitting in his rattan-backed chair, describing the events of the past few days, watching Holmes take each snippet of information, process and file or discard it, was as fine a tonic to Watson as a bottle of Dr Robin’s.

  When he had finished, Watson drained the last of his lukewarm tea. Holmes had sat back, head inclined to the ceiling, as if following the fate of the curlicue of smoke arising from the cigarette still burning in his right hand.

  ‘It isn’t a bomb.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  Holmes snapped forward. ‘Really, Watson, I am surprised at you. A military man and all.’

  Holmes bent down and picked up the brass piece that Watson had collected from Harley Street. ‘It is a shell.’

  ‘I never had much to do with artillery,’ Watson admitted. ‘Only with the aftereffects of their bombardments. Are you saying the Germans are shelling us now?’

  ‘It is,’ said Holmes, turning it over in his hands, ‘a British shell. The number here tells us it is a timed fuse, not a percussive one. The time is set by tightening this nut. It will have, if memory serves, a maximum of sixteen seconds from firing. That is enough to reach sixteen thousand feet before detonation.’

  ‘It is an anti-aircraft shell.’

  Holmes nodded. ‘I think you will find that, all over London, people are placing parts of German bombs on their mantelpieces that are nothing of the kind. As the old saying has it, what goes up, must come down. London is surrounded by guns pointing at the sky.’

  ‘Not just surrounded, Holmes. I saw more of them moving into the park just now. The guns are in the very heart of London.’

  ‘Then, on the next big raid, expect a steel rain to fall on the city. And not just from our enemy. And to what avail? I do believe the new bombers fly higher than sixteen thousand feet.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. But the guns are for morale, to show we are doing something against the raiders.’

  Holmes said nothing. His thoughts had moved on, having made his point. ‘Mycroft did as you asked. He made enquiries about the Dover Arrow sinking and your missing friend. He was summoned that very day to luncheon with what he calls a very senior figure, at the Reform. Superficially, he says, it was a very pleasant hour or two, convivial even. The Dover Arrow was not mentioned at all. At least not by name. But Mycroft came away from it fully aware that if he were to pursue the matter, the doors of the Diogenes would be closed to him for ever.’

  ‘But I thought he founded it?’

  Holmes waved that away with his etiolated fingers. ‘His pension would be found to have irregularities. His lodgings requisitioned. He might even find himself on a certain island off the coast of Essex.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Watson shuddered as he recalled the aptly named Foulness, an unofficial prison colony, and the mudflats around it that had almost claimed their lives. That was during the mission he had undertaken for Winston Churchill and when he had first encountered the loathsome Miss Pillbody, the German agent who had caused him such misery. A She Wolf, he reluctantly recalled, one of a group of female spies trained to kill with impunity. As she had Mrs Gregson on that bridge.

  ‘I can feel fragments spinning in my head, Watson, and I am waiting for them to come together. It is as if I need reversed explosion to fission them together. Have you seen the newspapers?’

  ‘No, I haven’t had time.’

  ‘Do not ignore them, Watson. Time was when you were assiduous in your reading. There is much of interest in here.’

  ‘About the Dover Arrow?’ Watson asked.

  Holmes shook his head. ‘No. Nothing on that subject. Which in itself is of some interest. Normally the fires of war could be stoked for a good few days with such an atrocity. But the newspapers seem to have lost interest.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t,’ said Watson. ‘I would still like to know what happened to that ship and to Staff Nurse Jennings.’

  ‘Your loyalty does you proud, but I think you need to prioritize, Watson. Let us consider the matter of Sir Gilbert and the others to begin with. That is where the urgency lies. First, The Times.’ He plucked the newspaper from the floor and tossed it over. ‘The classifieds.’

  Watson examined the various entries on the front page.

  ‘See anything unusual?

  ‘No.’

  ‘The black square.’

  Watson let his eyes drop. Lower down the page, there was indeed a large, solid-black square taking up the space of several entries.

  ‘Now turn to page fifteen. Exact same position.’

  Watson did as he was instructed. He read what was printed in Baskerville bold: ‘“One hundred per cent.”’

  ‘The same phrase that your flour-throwing man exclaimed, if my memory serves me.’

  ‘It does. He did.’

  ‘Page twenty-five, almost the same location.’

  ‘“Justice. Fairness. Compassion,”’ Watson read. ‘“GODS.” Gods? What kind of Gods?’

  ‘The mortal kind. An acronym, I suspect. An organization, of some description. London is full of leagues and legions and . . .’ a moment’s thought, ‘. . . guilds.’

  This was true, there were leagues of various women’s organizations, guilds of old soldiers, of temperance agitators, leagues of workers, and of those demanding an end to the war. Everyone belonged to one political group or another, it seemed.

  ‘You think the ‘G’ is for guild?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Guild of . . .? What?’

  ‘What exactly did they do to Sir Gilbert?’ asked Holmes.

  Watson had spared him the grisly details. ‘They blinded him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By removing the lens from each eye. Completely. And with less finesse than Sir Gilbert might have managed.’

  ‘Will he ever see again?’

  Watson shook his head. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Not much compassion or justice there, then. But the person who did this . . . would they need medical knowledge?’

  ‘I would venture the incision and repair show some evidence of medical training, yes. But Sir Gilbert was an expert in this field. This is crude surgery, by his lights.’

  ‘And is Sir Gilbert speaking yet?’

  ‘Not for the moment. Still sedated.’

  ‘When he is well enough to be questioned, we must interrogate him on every detail of his ordeal. Every detail. As you well know, Watson, people often hold the key to a puzzle without even realizing it. I would venture that the black square here represents blindness, total darkness. It is a demand, albeit a cryptic one, from our “Guild”. The next victim will be deafened, I fear.’

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’

  ‘All in good time, Watson. Now, back to the news. Last night’s air raid. Page five, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, here it is.’

  ‘Only one casualty,’ said Holmes.

  ‘It was a short raid.’

  ‘The name is in the second paragraph from the end.’

  Watson felt cold fingers playing down his spine as he read it: “Shinwell Johnson.” ‘Porky? Good grief. I . . . only just . . . how could this be? Porky killed by German bombs? Of all the bad luck.’

  ‘Luck, Watson? Luck?’ Holmes dismissed fate with another wave of his fingers. ‘Do you recall these words? “Look out of this window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then blend once more into the cloudbank. The thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.” Well?’

  ‘Of course. I quoted you verbatim.’

  ‘Not quite verbatim, but no matter. I was, of course, referring to the masking qualities of a peasouper. But this night-time blackout in London – is it not just as convenient to the ways of the underworld?’

  ‘For the petty crook perhaps—’

  ‘Can you,’ Holmes interrupted, his v
oice rising to stifle Watson’s words, ‘think of a better way to dispose of a body than during an air raid? It is the one time we expect to see the dead in the streets. With convenient blast and scorch marks to disguise any telltale signs of fatal injury, it could be the perfect crime. Would there even be a post-mortem? Unlikely. Even the most meticulous of medical examiners would put cause of death as being due to enemy action.’

  ‘And you think . . .? You think it was a case of murder?’ Watson asked.

  ‘I have my suspicions, but no more. I contacted Mr Johnson some time ago, asking him to keep his ears sharp. I had . . . a feeling.’ Holmes saw the surprise in Watson’s eyes. ‘Yes, the man of science and logic, he had an instinct, a sensation, the hint of some disturbance. Don’t ask me to explain. But I was unsettled, agitated, as men of our age often are. But the more I examined this perplexing perception, the more I was certain something was afoot. And then! You engage Porky to investigate a man apparently back from the dead. Next we read in the dailies that Mr Shinwell Johnson has been killed in an air raid, blown to pieces. Only identified because of the name in his hat. I would wager they stripped all documents from Porky, so he would be just an anonymous victim, but neglected to check his hatband. Porky was not a man of great refinements, but he did have his hats made at Philips in Victoria.’

  ‘Who always sew a label with their address and the customer’s name in their product.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘This is monstrous. But, Holmes, what exactly did you ask of Porky?’

  Now, Holmes was on his feet, pacing. ‘I asked him to scour his contacts for news of Frank Shackleton.’

  ‘Shackleton?’

  ‘I was beginning to form the opinion that our wild-goose chase earlier in the year was nothing of the sort. What? What is it?’

  Watson gave a smile. ‘And I was beginning to form the opinion that you had designed the whole Shackleton episode as a distraction. For me.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ Holmes stroked his chin. ‘My old friend, if only I was that considerate of others’ feelings. No, I had genuinely heard tell of a handsome Irishman with certain proclivities who had reappeared in the capital and been seen in Hatton Garden and Leather Lane. Places where one might seek to dispose of, say, the Irish Crown Jewels.’

  ‘Holmes, is your jaw all right?’

  ‘Just a toothache, I think.’

  ‘Let me have a look.’

  ‘In a moment.’ He clicked the mandible from side to side. ‘We are in Wimpole Street; we cannot be far from a good dentist.’

  ‘No, indeed. Holmes, you were going to tell me how you knew the next victim would be deaf.’

  He stopped pacing and stared down at Watson. ‘Yes, I—’

  The pain hit Holmes like a steam locomotive ramming into his chest, crushing the ribs, bursting heart and lungs. He gripped his left arm, where hot pokers were being forced down the neural pathways.

  Watson had rarely moved so quickly in years and was on his feet in a flash, or so it seemed to him, but not fast enough to prevent his old friend crumpling to the floor with the most terrible of strangulated cries.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Will he recover, Dr Sykes?’

  The doctor, a portly man in his late fifties with a white moustache stained by years of nicotine, looked down at the figure in the bed as he returned his small flashlight to his top pocket. He had been looking in the patient’s ears. He knew he could speak openly because there was no way the man could hear him.

  ‘To be frank, I have no idea.’

  Inspector George Bullimore ran a hand through his hair. Nobody seemed to know anything. First Sir Gilbert and then . . . this. The door to the private ward opened and Captain Trenchard limped in. ‘Well?’

  ‘I called but got the housekeeper. A Mrs Turner. There seemed to be some kind of flap on.’

  ‘Flap?’ the policeman asked. ‘What sort of flap?’

  ‘I am not sure. She wasn’t making too much sense. There were people there. Running up and down stairs. I could hear them. She said something about heart failure.’

  This was all Bullimore needed and he barked the next question far louder than intended. ‘Watson’s had a heart attack?’

  ‘No, not Major Watson.’

  Well, that was a small mercy. ‘So he’s attending a heart attack?’

  ‘I think so. Someone in his building.’

  ‘I’ll send a man round later,’ said Bullimore. Telephones were meant to make life simpler, quicker, but they would never replace face-to-face contact. After all, it was a relatively simple matter to determine when most people were lying during an interview. Try that down a crackling phone line.

  ‘How is he?’ asked Trenchard.

  The three men examined the sleeping Powell. He seemed at ease now, a far cry from the naked, strait-jacketed man who had been brought in after shedding his clothes in Trafalgar Square. Stark, raving mad, by all accounts.

  ‘So this man is also a member of the War Injuries Compensation Board?’ asked Sykes.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Bullimore. ‘But I don’t want that to go outside this room. Understood? If the press realizes what is going on . . .’

  ‘What is going on?’ the doctor asked.

  Bullimore looked at Captain Trenchard, the RAMC man, wondering whether to dismiss him or not. A fainting quack wasn’t much use. On the other hand, he could do with a medical man on tap in the absence of Major Watson. The armed services had taken the majority of the police surgeons he would normally rely on, leaving only the drunkards and the incompetents. ‘Letters have been simultaneously delivered to the War Office, the Ministry of Pensions and Scotland Yard indicating that unless a wholesale review is undertaken, then the mutilations will continue. In an “appropriate fashion”.’

  ‘Appropriate to what?’

  ‘War injuries,’ said Trenchard, looking as if he were going to faint again. ‘So Sir Gilbert is blinded, Dr Powell here driven mad.’

  ‘And deafened,’ added Sykes.

  ‘Deafened?’ Bullimore repeated. ‘How?’

  ‘Some sort of resin-like substance has been forced into his ear and it has set solid. We might be able to remove it; his mind, though, is another matter.’

  ‘So each of the War Injuries Compensation Board is to be maimed in a way that might reflect the sort of damage our soldiers return with,’ said Trenchard. ‘But that’s—’

  ‘Diabolical,’ completed Bullimore.

  That wasn’t what the young medic was about to say, but he kept quiet.

  Sykes jumped in. ‘Were these letters signed? I mean, is anybody taking responsibility for this outrage?’

  ‘The same as the entries in the newspaper they directed us towards.’

  ‘Newspaper?’

  Bullimore quickly explained about the classifieds that had appeared in four of the dailies. ‘GODS,’ he said. ‘Although we have no idea what it stands for.’

  ‘GODS?’ Trenchard repeated. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You’ve heard of them?’

  ‘No, but I know of a similar organization. LOUGS. The League of Unfortunate Gentlemen. They had the same aims, but—’

  ‘You know them how?’ interrupted Bullimore.

  ‘Only because of some hotheads who gave out leaflets at the station a few months back. Telling the soldiers to demand more compensation.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  Trenchard shook his head. ‘Not accurately. Not this far removed. As I said, it was months ago. I simply recall their being young, wild-eyed and passionate. One of them was on crutches. Another had an eye patch.’

  ‘Have they been back since?’ Bullimore asked.

  ‘No, both the railway and the military police threatened them with arrest and worse. They were upsetting the men, you see. The ones coming off the ambulance trains. It’s not much of a welcome to be told you’ve been maimed for your country and can expect little in the way of recompense, is it?’

  ‘No,’ agreed Sykes. ‘I have
some sympathy with their cause, but this . . .’ He indicated Powell. ‘To maim other men to prove the point about an injustice . . . well, it doesn’t add up, does it? Morally, I mean.’

  ‘It’s no good looking for morality here,’ said Bullimore. ‘We shall have to look out for what they are going to do next. Three men are left out there, to be made examples of. Before . . .’ He let it tail off.

  ‘Before what?’ asked Sykes.

  It was Trenchard who answered. ‘They’ve done eyes. Ears and brain. Men blinded by mustard and chlorine gas, men deafened and sent mad by the guns.’

  ‘So what’s next?’ asked Bullimore.

  ‘Amputees.’ A pale-faced Trenchard mimed a sawing motion. ‘Next, they’ll start removing limbs.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  If you had to suffer an episode of angina in London, thought Watson, there were few more convenient addresses for it to happen than Wimpole Street. Even better, make sure your attack happens in the presence of a doctor who, though perhaps rusty in such things after years of treating the mangling of the human body by the machinery of war, still had both his full medical bag and his faculties.

  Although the sudden collapse of his old friend had initiated a cacophony of conflicting advice in his head, he had concentrated on two old standbys – first, a misting vapour of nitroglycerine, followed by a dose of atropine. There were those who swore by adrenalin, but he had heard that the dosage was critical. He had been performing the crude brush strokes of street medicine, not the finesse of the doctor’s surgery.

  He told Mrs Turner to call the King Edward VII’s Hospital for Officers on Grosvenor Gardens. It was reserved for serving officers, but Watson’s name secured Holmes a bed, in a small ward that held just eight patients, all of them in long-term care. The man to the right of Holmes was engrossed in reading Aeschylus in the original Greek. The bed to his left was empty, although Watson was certain it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  Watson was sitting in a metal chair at Holmes’s bedside, his friend’s bony right hand cradled in his own, and he imagined Holmes’s eyes staring at him reproachfully from behind closed lids.

  ‘You saved his life.’ It was the matron, Sybil Howard, who gave lie to the cliché that all matrons had to be as offensive and unforgiving as tanks. Sybil Howard had a lot more in her armoury than the usual matronly robustness – although he had seen her reduce young nurses to tears readily enough when they had endangered a man’s life – because at fifty she was still startlingly attractive. He’d seen her use that, too, on many a stubborn, crusty major who was unwilling to submit to a bed bath or a Coudé catheter. She also had a fierce command of logic, arguing down even professors when she felt their diagnosis or course of treatment was less than perfect. The fact she survived such encounters – matrons were there to supervise nurses, not make clinical decisions – spoke volumes. She was a clever, compassionate soul, albeit wrapped in steel plate and barbed wire when need be.