“Two tests down,” Dr Pentecost announced. “Three to go.”
“Five in all?” I exclaimed in dismay. “Then we are not even halfway there yet.”
“Five is not such a great number, Doctor,” said Dr Pentecost. “Hercules faced Twelve Labours. Theseus faced six challenges on the road from Troezen to Athens. Five is reasonable by comparison.”
“Look at it another way, Watson,” said Holmes. “We have had a one hundred per cent success rate so far. That bodes well.”
“If you say so,” I murmured.
“Onward to the next test, gentlemen,” said Dr Pentecost. “Orion’s Nemesis.”
Holmes ducked through the doorway. I, limping a little still, followed in his wake. Uppermost in my thoughts was Hannah. I pictured her in the clutches of that brute Malachi Hart, and I seethed. For her alone I was willing to see this ordeal through to its conclusion – for the chance to be reunited with her and look upon her face again.
It had occurred to me, however, that Dr Pentecost could surely not wish Holmes and me to navigate all the way to the end of the labyrinth and come out the other side free and clear. That would be entirely antithetical to his own interests.
Rather, he would do everything in his power to ensure we failed.
Failed fatally.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE OSTOMACHION
A few twists and turns of passageway, another sliding door, and we were in the third chamber.
This one was compact indeed, a six-foot cube. Holmes had to stoop slightly in order to keep the crown of his head from scraping the ceiling.
Set into the wall facing us was another door. Adjacent to it was a shallow recess containing a two-foot-square shelf mounted at a steep inward angle. A raised edge surrounded the shelf, making it seem like some sort of empty picture frame.
Resting on the floor at our feet were a number of terracotta tiles – a mixture of polygons, predominantly triangles. These had been laid out adjacent to one another so that together they formed a shape. It looked like a queer geometrical letter J lying on its side. The curved stroke of the J hooked over one end of the main bar, reaching a third of the way along, while at the other end two triangles were arranged pointing outwards in a V-formation like a pair of flamboyant serifs.
Holmes drew my notice to a series of vertical trapdoors positioned equidistantly along both of the side walls at wainscot height, seven a side. Each was not much larger than a man’s handkerchief.
“You have doubtless spotted a correspondence between the trapdoors and the tiles,” he said.
It took me a moment to grasp what he was driving at. “There are the same number of both.”
“Excellent. Yes. Fourteen of each. That cannot be irrelevant. The tiles, moreover, are inset snugly into moulded trays. Given Buchanan’s patent fondness for hidden trigger mechanisms, it would therefore be reasonable to deduce that any action upon one of them may cause a trapdoor to activate.”
“Releasing… what?”
“Some kind of animal, I’ll be bound,” Holmes said. “A small one, to judge by the size of the trapdoors and also by the scuff marks in the dust in the corner there, which betray the passage of dainty feet.”
“A mouse? I cannot say the thought of mice scampering about the chamber is an unduly alarming one. It does not fill me with the urge to hitch up my skirts and shriek.”
“No, I do not think it is mice.”
“Rats? Again, hardly the most terrifying prospect. Some may detest them but I find them inoffensive. A boy at my school, Percy Phelps – remember him? – kept a couple as pets. They were amiable and rather intelligent things.”
“No, the scuff marks do not resemble those such as any rodent might leave. They are not paw-prints at all. I have an inkling they belong to something not mammalian, something altogether colder-blooded and less agreeable. This outline on the floor before us is, itself, a pointer towards its identity. Think of it as a crude side-elevation silhouette. I believe, too, that the particular fauna in question may well account for Labropoulos the chef’s jar of crickets. Those were not some exotic human foodstuff after all, as Miss Woolfson supposed. They were intended as prey for the animals we are shortly to be exposed to. Labropoulos’s duties, it would seem, include feeding livestock as well as Elysians.”
“Please, Holmes. Do not keep me in suspense. I am keen to know what awaits behind those trapdoors.” I was not so keen, however, to meet whatever it was in the flesh. Holmes’s face had taken on a grim aspect, and I could only assume that to mean we were in for some considerable unpleasantness.
Instead of answering me, my companion bent a knee and surveyed the arrangement of terracotta tiles.
“This test is called Orion’s Nemesis,” I said. “Orion was a hunter, I know that much. As the victim of what creature did he meet his demise?”
“The Ostomachion,” said Holmes, ignoring my question.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“These tiles comprise a dissection puzzle known as the Ostomachion, set down by Archimedes in a mathematical treatise called the Archimedes Palimpsest. It is both a game and an arithmetical proof. The fourteen shapes may be put together to form a square, or they may be laid out in various configurations crudely representing such items as a tree, a ship, an elephant, a dog, and so forth. The arithmetical element has to do with surface areas. The square represents a twelve-by-twelve grid, its surface area totalling 144 units. The ratio of the surface area of each polygon to the overall surface area of the square they cumulatively create is always an integer, and each integer is a multiple of one forty-eighth of the entire square. I am sure the late Professor Moriarty, with his expertise in mathematics, could have explained it more fully.”
“Thank God he is not here to do so,” I said. “Things are bad enough as they are.”
“We are being called upon, in this test, to remove the pieces from the floor and insert them into that recessed frame by the door. Once the square is complete, the collective weight of the pieces will cause the frame to bear down upon a switch. The switch requires precisely that much weight to function, doubtless by means of a carefully calibrated counterweight against which it is suspended. This will in turn unlock the door. We will then be permitted to leave the cramped confines of this chamber.” Holmes hesitated. “Unfortunately, the Ostomachion has at least five hundred possible solutions, if I recall rightly. And as we pick up each piece, so a trapdoor opens, unleashing something rather loathsome upon us.
“The logical approach is not to go about this bullishly – not to dive straight in and hope for the best. It is, rather, to solve the puzzle in theory first, before assembling it in practice. That would result in the shortest possible amount of time spent in the company of hazardous arthropods, whose presence might unsettle and lead to panicked, inaccurate thinking.”
“Hazardous arthropods?” I echoed.
“Once again, Watson, I pray you be silent while I direct all my mental energies onto the problem at hand.”
I loitered by the entry door while Holmes stared intently at the terracotta tiles. Occasionally he flicked a glance to the frame, before returning his gaze back to the floor. Into how many permutations must he have been organising those fourteen shapes, in his mind’s eye? I imagined him aligning and realigning them, flipping them over, translating them in space, fitting them one next to the other, subjecting various potential formations to trial and error, all without touching them, using his remarkable brain alone.
About five minutes passed, during which time I became aware of a faint scratching sound that originated from behind the trapdoor nearest my feet. I crouched to get closer, bracing myself with a hand on the floor because my leg was still not yet working as it ought.
Putting my ear to the trapdoor – a mere thin sheet of metal – I heard a frantic scuffling and clicking on the other side. It was multifarious, this noise, as of dozens of tiny feet moving, dozens of hard bodies scraping against one another.
; Hazardous arthropods. But of what species? Spiders? Not long since, Holmes and I had had a brush with a pair of monstrous Galeodes spiders in Deptford, brought over from the jungles of Cuba by the notorious canary-trainer Wilson. I prayed we were not about to be confronted by further similar specimens of venomous arachnid.
“Yes…” Holmes said softly. “That should do the trick.”
“You have hit upon the solution?”
“One of the five-hundred-odd. But listen to me, Watson. Once I commence setting the tiles into the frame, we are going to be surrounded very quickly by stinging insects. I will work as swiftly as I can, but I am relying on you to do your bit and safeguard me from harm in the meantime.”
“I am your man, Holmes.”
“Spoken like the true hero you are. Then without further ado…”
Holmes snatched up one of the largest tiles, a long irregular pentagon shaped not unlike a tall, skew-roofed townhouse. No sooner had he done so than the trapdoor midway along the left-hand wall snapped open.
Out from the aperture in the wall crawled first one, then several multiple-legged creatures. They were of various hues – yellow, black, reddish-brown – and ranged in size from the length of a thumb to the breadth of a handspan. Their carapaces glistened dully in the light from the Tilley lamp, as did, more brightly, the several pairs of pinhead-sized eyes perched atop the front of their bodies. Each of them wielded a pair of pincers and a long, segmented tail that bore a bulbous, wickedly pointed tip.
They were scorpions, and like felons newly escaped from gaol they scattered in all directions across the floor, exploring the bounds of the chamber and drawn inexorably, so it seemed, towards the two human occupants.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ORION’S NEMESIS, IN DROVES
A wave of horripilation swept over my body as the scorpions rushed out of their place of confinement. Although several of them made straight for Holmes and me, there did not seem any malicious intent in the action. Perhaps our scent attracted them, or the heat of our bodies. I do not know. I am no entomologist. All the same, for a few terrible, stunned seconds the only thing I could do was stare, dumbfounded, almost giddy with revulsion and fear, as the creatures approached.
“Watson!”
Holmes’s barked cry brought me back to my senses. He had placed the first piece of the Ostomachion in the frame and was retrieving another. Immediately after a second piece was in his hand, a second trapdoor sprung open, affording the ingress of a further dozen scorpions into the room.
“Our bargain?” he prompted.
“Y-yes,” I stammered. “Yes, of course.”
A scorpion so big that one might have mistaken it for a langoustine was scuttling directly towards my friend’s feet. I raised my foot and stamped hard on the wretched beast. The crunch of its destruction beneath my boot-heel was loud, wet and sickening but also supremely satisfying. A smaller scorpion hurried over to the mess of chitinous fragments and oozing flesh and began picking at it, shovelling morsels with its pincers into its mouth. I stamped on that one too, more because its carrion cannibalism disgusted me than because it posed a threat to Holmes.
I spotted a third scorpion stalking towards my companion with its pincers aloft and agape, like a soldier marching onto the battlefield with weapons at the ready. It was matte black, dark as ebony, save for the teardrop-shaped bulb at the end of its tail, which was orange. I brought my foot down on it, but it was crafty, this one, and managed to dodge my assault. In retaliation it charged straight at me, tail arched, moving almost more quickly than the eye could follow. It seemed undaunted by the fact that I was an opponent a hundred times larger. It must have fancied itself a David, fearless in the face of Goliath.
Yet Goliath, in contravention of the Biblical tale, was the victor in this bout. I kicked the scorpion so that it flew against the wall, and while it was busy righting itself, I pulverised it under my sole.
Holmes by now had four tiles in place in the frame and was gathering a fifth. To do so he first had to swat aside a couple of scorpions that had taken up residence on the very tile he needed. One of the creatures managed to grab hold of his shirt-cuff and clung grimly on as he picked up the tile. Only by dint of vigorous arm-shaking was he able to dislodge it.
I went about the chamber, squashing scorpions underfoot as methodically as possible. Try as I might, though, my actions were anything but precise and cool-headed. I wanted those diminutive monsters dead, every last one. I could feel how my lip was curled in revulsion. I could hear myself growling curses in the back of my throat.
Yet the scorpions’ numbers were growing faster than I was able to exterminate them. With each newly opened trapdoor fresh reinforcements appeared, adding to the scurrying, rustling horde about us. The corpses of the ones I killed did at least provide a distraction to some of the new arrivals, who stopped to snack on them, while a few of the living entered into combat with one another, motivated by rivalry or enmity or I cannot say what; but the vast majority seemed interested in Holmes and me above all else and had no qualms about besieging us.
I heard Holmes give vent to a loud expletive, and saw that he had been stung on the hand while collecting the latest tile.
“Holmes, I should take a look at that.”
“No time, no time. I can continue.”
“Some people react badly to scorpion stings.” I had had experience of this in Afghanistan, when my friend Colonel Hayter disturbed a scorpion that had crawled into his bedroll. Stung on the wrist, his forearm swelled up with severe anaphylaxis, and for a while amputation looked to be on the cards, in order that the inflammation might be prevented from spreading further and closing his windpipe or imperilling his cardiovascular system. Under my care, however, he made a full recovery and to this day Hayter credits me with saving his life, while I ascribe his survival to his stout constitution.
“Then let us hope I am not one of them,” Holmes said, applying himself to his task once more.
The frame was almost filled with tiles. The chamber, likewise, was almost filled with scorpions. The floor was bedecked with the sticky, ichorous residue of those I had massacred. Not only the soles but the uppers of my boots were encrusted with pieces of arthropod.
I spied several of the creatures clambering up Holmes’s trouser-legs. He was aware of their presence but refused to be put off by it. Briskly, efficiently, he slotted the final few tiles into position. Together, they formed an ensemble thus:
As Holmes had anticipated, the combined mass of the fourteen tiles pressed the frame downward. A latch clicked. The door opened. Holmes lunged out into the corridor beyond, I hard on his heels. The door then rolled shut, causing the deaths of three more scorpions in the process as they, making a bid for freedom, were swept sideways by it and crushed against its jamb.
In gingerly fashion Holmes detached the scorpions still adhering to his person. He ground them to paste underfoot, all save one, which he held up by the tail for close examination. One of the more modest-sized specimens, its carapace as yellow as pus, the scorpion writhed this way and that in his grasp, legs and pincers flailing.
“I count the scorpion amongst the Creator’s most perfect handiworks,” he said, evincing fascination. “A predator that can withstand both the searing heat of the desert day and the freezing cold of the desert night and that has no objective save to kill, eat and reproduce. The palaeontological record shows that it has survived on Earth since the Silurian era. It lives without fear, acts without hesitation…”
“And should be obliterated without mercy,” I added.
“Give me a moment at least to admire it as the Platonic ideal of pure, conscienceless purpose. Biologists say that the scorpion’s venom liquefies the internal organs of its victims, making them easier for it to ingest and digest. Essentially it is a stomach on legs.”
“Really, Holmes. That is enough. Get rid of it and be done.”
With a show of regret – mostly but not wholly feigned – my companion dropped the
scorpion to the floor and despatched it.
Then he said, “Stay very still, Watson.”
I knew better than to disobey the command. Holmes’s face had gone abruptly rigid, his voice icy.
“Where is it?” I said. “Where is the damned thing?”
“There,” he said, pointing. “Making for your ear.”
Swivelling my eyes as far to one side as they would go, while not turning my head, I glimpsed a rust-coloured scorpion perched upon my shoulder, mere inches from my face. It was close enough that I could distinguish the fine bristles that sprouted all over it, and its eyes in their paired rows. I could also make out its mouth parts, an agglomeration of glistening, interlocking mandibles. These splayed and clenched with what looked to me like sheer greed, the lip-smacking relish of a glutton about to tuck into a gourmet meal.
“Oh God,” I murmured. “Get it off me, Holmes. Get it off.”
With painstaking slowness Holmes reached for the beast. The scorpion, meanwhile, began to probe my cheek with its pincers. I then felt its legs touch my jaw, my sideburns, my earlobe…
Nothing can compare with the horror of feeling those insectile feet prickling my skin. Even as I write these words, eight years on, the sensation recurs, vividly. It is as though that same scorpion is seated upon my shoulder at this very moment. I am squirming inside, now, just as I was squirming inside, then.
Holmes pounced, brushing the scorpion off me with a swift sideways swipe of his hand. No sooner did it hit the floor than he crushed it. Even with its abdomen a pulpy ruin, its legs continued to writhe for nearly a full minute until, with one last spasmodic twitch, they fell still.
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