by Barry Day
“Warn you of what?”
“Warn me that I had meddled with the ways of the Lord—his Lord. ‘And my God is a jealous God, Mr. Holmes,’ he said. ‘He brooks no interference but strikes down all who stand in His Path and defy His Purpose …’”
“Then he grew a little confused and it was not clear whether he was doing the talking or whether his ‘God’ was supposed to be talking though him. His identity seemed to come and go.”
“We have been conscious of your presence for some time … In a previous life you caused us grave inconvenience and interfered with the holy work we were sent to do here. It was you who caused us to be banished into the wilderness. There we wandered and all men set their hand against us …”
“If the man is serious, he’s certifiable, Holmes.”
“… and now you are playing the busybody all over again—you and that gross brother of yours and that oafish doctor friend …”
For once I was speechless. ‘Oafish’, indeed!
Holmes caught my eye for the first time.
“Don’t concern yourself unduly, old friend. He had much worse to say about me. And by this time it was clear that Daintry was firmly back in control, at least for the moment. It was like listening to two or three different people inhabiting the same body. Quite unnerving, I can assure you. A moment or two later Cain had returned …”
“But the Lord found me. He came to me as an epiphany in a vision on the mountain top. He raised me and bathed my wounds. He entered my soul and transformed me to what you see now. He imbued me with His Purpose—and I shall fulfill that Purpose. None of your puny efforts shall stand in my way.
“I am here today, Sherlock Holmes to serve you notice. You have ensured that God’s vengeance will be even more terrible than was first intended …”
“By this time the man—Cain, Daintry, whoever he was—was striding around the room. Oh, I kept a careful eye on him,” Holmes quickly added, sensing my concern, “but I no longer felt I was in immediate danger. He had come to pour out his bile. In a strange way I actually felt quite sorry for him. Whatever was causing it, he was in genuine pain. I must admit to you, Watson, that my own thoughts were more than a little confused by now but I knew that it was my one chance to draw information from him while he was in this mood.”
“And precisely what form may we expect this Divine Retribution to take?” I asked.
“It was the wrong question, old friend, the wrong question. For it triggered some safety mechanism in that distorted brain. It was the cunning old Daintry who looked back at me, even though he answered in the voice of Cain.”
“Remember the Apocalypse, Mr. Holmes. The Four Horsemen …”
“Yes, Pestilence … Famine … War … and Death, if I recall?”
“Correct. And the First Horseman shall be Pestilence … ‘I will smite them with pestilence and disinherit them.’ Book of Numbers. Chapter Fourteen, Verse Twelve. Study it well, Mr. Holmes, for it may be the last book you ever read …”
“And with that, Watson, he was at the door. ‘Pestilence shall lead the way but the rest will surely follow. And then I shall create the Lord’s new dominion here on earth.’”
“He clearly intended this to be his grand exit but I’m afraid I rather—what do the actors say?—I rather ‘trod on his lines’. As he was turning to go, I said …’ A plague on all our houses, eh? Sometimes I find the Bard more apposite than the Book. And one other thing—it may well be that your Numbers and my numbers add up to a different total, Mr. Cain. Had your ego not intervened and led you to pay off old scores, I might never have become involved in your new devilry. But once I knew the Ripper was back, I had scores of my own to settle.
“‘But you talk of your new vision. May I ask you a question, Mr. Cain? How can your plan be completed until you have found Senta or Violetta or—Irene?’”
“He slammed the door so hard we may need to have someone look at the hinges.”
Now, for the first time since he had begun his narrative, he rose to his feet and strode over to the bay window. I went to his side and stood at his shoulder, as he looked down into the street below. To my eye it looked no different from any other day with the clip-clop of the hansoms and the ever-moving skein of people going about their business but Holmes obviously saw something more.
“To men like Cain—or Moriarty in his day—the individual is meaningless, yet each of those little dots is a human life. Each has its hopes and fears and dreams and deserves the right to play out the hand that God has dealt it. None of us has the right to usurp that role and play God.
“I have never felt more sure in my life, old fellow, than I did just now that we stand poised to help millions of our fellow men and women—or fall into the pit along with them.
“Come along, Watson, we haven’t a moment to lose …”
“Where are we going to, Holmes?”
“To lunch at a certain club in St. James’s Watson, where I happen to know the kitchen closes early. Even in times of crisis it does not do to ignore the inner man. But I guarantee you an unusual dessert …”
For reasons of discretion I shall omit the name of the club. Suffice it to say that within its discreet portals many an important assignation has been made and many a decision taken that changed the course of history. From its distinctive curved windows that commanded the sweep of that distinguished thoroughfare a man might see that history unroll. But already I am in danger of giving too much away …
I was not aware that Holmes was a member of the club. In fact, I would have been prepared to bet that he was not but Mycroft’s influence and the high regard in which he himself was held ensured that this was not a problem. He was greeted with understated effusiveness and we were shown to a table in a quiet corner, where we could talk without being overheard.
Over lunch we reviewed what we knew of Cain’s recent history and it was frustratingly little and irritatingly contradictory.
“The man has gone to great pains to make himself into an instant celebrity on the public stage. There can be scarcely a person in London, at least, who does not know of him. He preaches Doom and they shudder deliciously, as though he were reading them a tale by the Brothers Grimm. He is the Chief Barker at some religious carnival …”
Holmes traced the tines of his fork on the linen table cloth, creating a grooved pattern of tighter and tighter circles that seemed to represent our progress.
“… and yet all of this is a snare and delusion. People are lulled into believing that he is an entertainer when, in reality, we have reason to know that he means every word. What we still do not know is how he means to achieve it, how he means to bring about his version of the Apocalypse.
“There are two men in London who may be able to help us in this regard. Let us take our coffee and consult one of them …”
As we descended the stairs, Holmes sketched in a brief background of the man we were about to meet.
“Langdale Pike is a human book of reference on scandal. London is his web and this club is the epicentre of it. All gossip reverberates through his strands. Some of it he turns into lucrative little paragraphs for those periodicals that cater to a prurient public. The rest he peddles in a variety of other ways. I freely confess, old fellow, that I have, from time to time, had cause to use his services myself and have, on occasion, even helped him in turn. I do not, I should add, regard those as among my finest hours. Ah, here we are …”
We had reached one of the club’s sitting rooms that faced on to the street. It was empty except for the effete and languid creature who sat in the bow of the window like some well-worn advertisement, there to see and be seen by all who passed by.
He was extremely thin and appeared to be tall, although he never once rose from his seated position during the whole time we were there. Hair and complexion were of a uniform washed out grey and in the bony face his nose—as Shakespeare says of Falstaff—was “as sharp as a pen.” But it was the eyes that drew your attention. I don’t know if ey
es can be ‘flat’ but his were—flat and restless. They flickered over us and back to the window. You knew they missed nothing.
If he was surprised to see Holmes unannounced, he displayed no sign of it. Perhaps the extra beat of attention he paid to me represented some form of enquiry, for it prompted my friend to introduce us. Pike did not offer his hand and I certainly did not seek it. I sensed that it would resemble the skin texture of the ugly fish that shared his name.
“Janus Cain,” said Holmes to the averted head at the window.
“Ah, I was wondering who would be the first …” And for the next ten minutes this odd little man—for, despite his height, he seemed curled up on himself—recited chapter and verse as though he were reading it out of a book of reference. He clearly possessed a remarkable and retentive memory, for there was much in what he said that was missing from Holmes’s Index entry.
Unfortunately, among all the detail surrounding Cain’s appearances, there was little that added to our knowledge of his underlying purpose. As if sensing our frustration, it was as though Pike turned to a new chapter.
“Before Cain arrived in London, there was a sudden movement in the property market—in Whitechapel, of all places. A series of houses—workmen’s cottages—were bought up. The whole of two streets, in fact, and a square in between. The supposition was that someone had purchased cheap property for the land it stood on and that someone would demolish the existing structures to build something of style and substance. In the event no such thing happened. Oh, there was building work done, right enough, but not by locals—which caused its own antipathy. The workmen were shipped in from the Continent and shipped out again when the work was done. Rumour has it that the whole interior was gutted and totally transformed—into what nobody can say, although there was talk of quantities of laboratory equipment being unloaded at dead of night.
The fact of the matter is that no one has seen inside the new structure. One morning, when the locals awoke from their gin-ridden slumbers …”—and here Pike took a sip from what looked suspiciously like a tumbler of gin—“they found themselves looking at The Church of the New Apocalypse … and Mr. Janus Cain (sic) was in residence.”
“The money?” Holmes asked.
“Now that is an interesting aspect.” Pike very nearly smiled at the mention of a subject that was clearly dear to his heart. “Mr. Cain makes a repetitive point of not accepting donations from his soi-disant parishioners. ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ I believe he is fond of saying. Nor, as far as I have been able to ascertain, does he have local backers. With his present, shall we say—eminence, those members of our gilded society who had put their money in Cain’s purse could never resist the opportunity to boast of it. Ah, ‘the pomp and vanity of this wicked world,’ as he himself might say—had the Book of Common Prayer not said it first.
“However, my friends in Lombard Street do speak—admittedly, in hushed tones—of large sums being transferred across that divisive stretch of water that cuts the Continent off from civilisation as we know it. Mr. Cain, in short, has a paymaster of seemingly infinite resource. He is, perhaps, not the Puppet Master so much as a rather large puppet himself. Why, in the golden age of our mutual acquaintance …”
But before he could complete the thought, Holmes had risen to his feet and cut him off. As I rose to join him …
“Pike, you are—as always—a treasure trove … or do I mean trough?… of information And speaking of treasure, you will, I know, give me an accounting in due course?”
“You may rest your reputation on it, my dear Mr. Holmes.”
And for another brief moment the eyes were turned in our direction. As we left the club and passed the window, I could see that he was writing something in a small notebook with a thin gold pencil and he was managing to do so without taking his eyes off the road.
“You must allow me my little secrets, Watson. The air of omniscience it pleases me to create is a compound of many things and many people. Pike is one of them. He is—like Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale—‘a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’ but many of them are not trifling in my eyes or for my purposes.
“The man we are about to meet—though not to see—is another such. In all the years we have done business together I have never set eyes on him. He chooses to call himself ‘Fred Porlock’ but that is no more his real name that Langdale Pike is—‘Langdale Pike’. Such men swim in the shadows.
“I first encountered Porlock during that affair you were pleased to call The Valley of Fear. It was he who first handed me the tiny thread that finally unravelled the Moriarty organisation. ‘Porlock’ himself was a supernumerary in that organisation but, unlike the rest, he somehow retained a flicker of conscience—a flicker I managed to fan into an occasional flame by the use of a judicious ten pound note. He would once or twice give me advance information, which was of inestimable value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I live in hopes that he will do so again today.
“Since Moriarty’s demise he has been operating as a freelance of sorts, though something about his response to my note suggests to me that he may once again have taken the Devil’s shilling.”
“Langdale Pike I can understand as a choice of name,” I said. We were now bowling along in a cab towards an address in Lambeth. “It has an aristocratic ring to it and I presume ‘Pike’—whoever he may be in reality—comes from that class or he would never be able to gain access to it and its information. But ‘Porlock’…?”
“No doubt you remember your Coleridge, old fellow? Coleridge was dozing in his garden, when he dreamed the poem we know as ‘Kubla Khan’. He awoke, tremendously excited, for he knew this would be his masterpiece. Just as he was committing it to paper, he was interrupted by the arrival of ‘a person on business from Porlock’. By the time the visitor had departed, so had the rest of the poem. Our friend sees himself as an interrupter to the natural course of events—a nice irony, if you think about it.”
The cab drew up in a South London side street of no particular distinction. There was the usual higgledy-piggledy combination of nondescript shops and back to back houses. Tucked among them and looking vaguely sorry for itself was a small Catholic church—St. Something-or-Other’s … the name on the sign was too faded to read. It was a far cry from London’s clubland.
Holmes read my mind, as always.
“Ours is not to reason why, old fellow. This was where I was directed to come. Perhaps we may save our souls while we are about it …”
So saying, he pushed open a heavy wooden door that screeched complainingly on hinges that cried out for oil. Inside the decor lived up to one’s expectations. Although it was empty now, the place had a shabby, well-worn look, though not unpleasantly so. This was a place in which a family was used to meeting, a family which cared more about the purpose of the visit than impressing one another with frills and furbelows. I could imagine the many thousands over the years who had sat in those wooden pews, knelt at that rail and left feeling better than when they entered. I could not help but compare it with Cain’s manufactured piety.
Holmes by now had left my side and was approaching a dark corner of the church, where I could see a confessional.
“Over here, Watson, if you please.”
As I approached he pulled back the curtain and I could just about make out the grille that separated the penitent’s section from that of the priest. As Holmes spoke, I thought I sensed movement in the deep shadows on the other side.
“Good evening, Mr. Porlock. This is my friend and colleague, Doctor Watson, who is good enough to help me from time to time with my investigations. We have followed your instructions to the letter. We are quite alone.”
“Not a good thing to be at this precise moment, Mr. Holmes. Good day, Doctor. You are, of course, known to me. I hear of Mr. Holmes everywhere since you became his chronicler …”
The voice was muffled and of indeterminate age but, then, it was o
bvious that the man was doing his best to disguise it by changing the pitch. Then to Holmes …
“My present lord and master—or, should I say, the most generous of the current crop?—is not a man to be trifled with. In fact, I freely admit that he is one who makes me distinctly uncomfortable, to the point where I intend to take a little holiday …”
“Presumably to the West Country?”
“Oh, very good, Mr. Holmes. Doctor Watson, you will have to watch your literary laurels. But do not take Cain lightly. This man is, if anything, more dangerous than our other friend—simply because he does not care about the consequences of his actions.”
“So what does he plan, Porlock?”
“I do not know for sure but it is something particularly unpleasant and I do have no intention of being around when it happens. Whatever it is, he plans it to take place …”
“On February the Fourteenth—two days from now.”
There was a pause. “As usual, you are well informed. But you will understand that, until I have put my own plans into operation, I must protect myself. I can give you but two clues. One is my own name …”
“And the other?”
“‘Remember Musgrave.’ And one other thing …”
“Yes.”
“On this occasion there will be no charge. If we are spared, I hope we three shall meet again in thunder, lightning or in rain … who can tell?”
“Porlock?”
But there was something in the feeling of the air in that little cubicle that told one we were now alone.
Chapter Thirteen
When I came down to breakfast the next morning, the debris of two boiled eggs told me that Holmes had, for once, pre-empted my arrival. I also found that we had a visitor—a small urchin, who could and did pass for any youngster one sees anywhere on the streets of London, except for his eyes. Button bright, they missed nothing. Anyone looking into them for five seconds would have known him to be extremely wary. Fortunately for the lad and his employer—my good friend, Sherlock Holmes—no one ever did.