“The evidence for that is quite plain,” said Holmes, gesturing at the body. “Poor McBride.”
“He has indeed suffered a most terrible fate,” said Dr Joshi. “Moreover, the inmate who I can only assume is responsible for this death has absconded from his cell. We made that discovery several minutes before McBride here was found, and I already have attendants out combing the vicinity. Rest assured, the culprit will be recovered.”
“Who is it? Who has absconded?”
“I am not sure it is any of your business, sir,” Joshi said, puffing himself up. “It is a matter for the hospital administration and if need be, should my men’s searches not bear fruit, for the police. Not for an amateur detective, however highly esteemed he may be in some quarters.”
Holmes was undeterred by the other’s dismissive tone. “Is the aforementioned inmate by any chance a man with a scarred face and a missing hand?”
Dr Joshi’s startled blink was all the answer needed.
“The window,” Holmes explained, “is the fourth along from the staircase, on this side. The cell of the inmate I have described is the fourth along on that floor, on the same side. The inference is, as friend Watson here so insists on having me say, elementary.”
Dr Joshi undertook a moment’s inner debate, then said, “I reprimanded McBride for allowing you onto the premises. The days when Bethlem was open to all and sundry are long past. Our inmates are not meant to be a laughing stock, a public entertainment. We do not invite people in to ogle at them any more, and charge a fee for the privilege. The asylum plays host to unwell human beings who deserve compassion and the appropriate treatment, both of which we supply.”
“We never came to ‘ogle’, as you put it. We were pursuing a case.”
“Nonetheless there are rules, and McBride infringed them. However,” Dr Joshi continued, “it is, to say the least, a peculiar coincidence that the inmate you refer to, the one whom you came to see yesterday, today breaks out of his cell and kills an attendant in the process. All the more so since until now he has not proved in any way violent. I am wondering if the one event gave rise to the other.”
“Our visit provoked an unexpected reaction?” said Holmes. “But surely, if that were the case, it would have happened straight away, not a day and a half later.”
“For which reason, and which reason alone, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, Mr Holmes. All the same, I remain suspicious.”
“If you will allow Dr Watson and me to view the cell in question, there is every chance I can allay your suspicions.”
Dr Joshi weighed up the proposal. “Do you think you can provide some insight into why the inmate broke out and where he might have gone? Not that I am clutching at straws,” he added, although to me he seemed to be doing just that. “But any assistance, however unorthodox, might be welcome, given that we have learned next to nothing about the man during the short time he has been here.”
“I will try my utmost to be of use,” Holmes said with a gracious bow, “although I make no promises.”
Dr Joshi was by now mollified. “I suppose it cannot hurt. Burrell, find something to cover the body with, a sheet or what have you. Gentlemen, if you will follow me…”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Impossible Rather than the Improbable
THE ENTIRE THIRD FLOOR OF THE EAST WING LIVED up to the hospital’s nickname. All along the corridor inmates were moaning and fretting in their cells, agitated to a markedly higher degree than during our previous visit. The one whom I had last seen tethered to his bedpost by a chain was now straining at his leash, mouth agape in a perpetual silent scream of anguish. The iron collar was chafing the skin of his neck so much it had drawn blood. Other inmates bayed like wolves, and two attendants were struggling to install one fellow in a straitjacket. He fought them every inch of the way, gnashing his teeth, trying to inflict bites. His lips were coated in a froth of sputum like a rabid animal’s.
Dr Joshi did his best to maintain a sanguine, phlegmatic air, despite the pandemonium around us. “You must understand,” he said, voice raised above the din, “an escape of this nature is all but unheard of. We are scrupulous about keeping inmates under lock and key at all times, the passive ones just as much as the aggressive ones. In this instance, as you shall see, the precaution was more or less redundant.”
That was indeed the case, for the door to the scarred man’s cell stood ajar but hardly in a manner that suggested it had been opened in the usual way. Rather, it hung askew from its hinges, one of which was snapped clean through, the other twisted at an angle.
“The door has been forced,” said Dr Joshi.
“You don’t say,” murmured Holmes, squinting at both hinges.
“A deed requiring some considerable strength.”
“Superhuman strength, one might call it.”
“Well, quite. It is on record that ordinary men are capable of extraordinary physical feats under the right provocation. Fear, panic, or the desire to rescue a loved one from peril inspires a surge of vitality, which lends unaccustomed might to the muscles. That, I am sure, is what occurred here. The inmate, overcome by a sudden, powerful mania, wrenched the door practically off its mounting. We may also infer that McBride rushed in to restrain him and the inmate hurled him through the window. Thereafter, the man fled, exiting the building by a somewhat unorthodox method.”
“Of what nature?”
“There is a window at the far end of this corridor. You can probably just discern it from here. It, too, is broken like the one in the cell. My assumption is that the inmate gained egress through it and shinned down a nearby drainpipe to the ground.”
“That, all told, is a perfectly plausible scenario,” said Holmes, “and one I would endorse. I recommend that you use it in any report you give about this incident, Doctor. You have elucidated the facts most satisfactorily.”
The alienist’s anxious face relaxed a little and something like a smile played upon his lips.
“If I may,” Holmes continued, “I should like to examine the cell itself in detail, purely for my own gratification. You doubtless have other matters to attend to – overseeing the recapture of your escapee amongst them – and I would not wish to impose any further upon your time.”
“You are asking me to leave you unchaperoned.”
“For a mere ten minutes or so. As I said, your summation of events cannot be anything but accurate. I, however, am a punctilious sort who likes all his ‘i’s dotted and ‘t’s crossed. I crave your indulgence to do just that.”
When it suited his purposes, Holmes could deploy a remarkable suavity that almost always got him his way. Now was no exception. Dr Joshi prevaricated for scarcely a moment before giving his assent.
“Very well, Mr Holmes. Conduct your examination. Then, if you would, depart.”
“You are too kind, Doctor.”
As the alienist hastened away, Holmes stepped around the crooked door and into the cell. I followed, and was relieved that the walls offered some insulation from the caterwauling of the madmen around us. Their clamour had begun to grate upon my nerves.
“You do not credit Dr Joshi’s interpretation of the evidence,” I said.
“Not for one instant, but it seemed prudent to reinforce what he already believed. Now he has something to tell the board of trustees and, if necessary, the press. Confirmation of his assumptions from Sherlock Holmes, if not authoritative, is at least emboldening.”
I gazed around at the words of R’lyehian scrawled upon the floor and walls in charcoal. The same three phrases recurred, as before, but there were, I reckoned, more of them than last time. Zachariah Conroy, if it was he, had kept himself busy since our visit.
Holmes, meanwhile, inspected the shattered window. With gimlet-eyed attention he ran a hand carefully over the jutting glass shards and splintered wood. A light breeze wafted in, stirring the tails of his topcoat.
“Ah!” he declared. His fingers had alighted upon a morsel of something
adhering to the apex of one of the shards. He plucked it free and held it out to me. “Watson, what do you make of this?”
I peered. “It would seem to be a scrap of leather. Black leather. From an item of apparel? McBride’s shoe perhaps? A fragment could have been torn off as he hurtled through the window.”
“Could have been, but for the fact that the leather of his shoes is brown, not black, and the shoes themselves are, as far as I could tell when I observed his body just now, intact. The uppers were a little scuffed but exhibited no more than the usual wear and tear. Moreover, note the softness of this substance.” He waggled the scrap in the air. It had a pliant, jelly-like consistency. “It is not cured. It is fresh tissue, until very recently part of a living creature.”
“I do not like where this is heading.”
“Neither do I. Yet the conclusion seems indisputable. Our inmate did not escape. He was abducted.”
“By whom?”
“The more accurate relative pronoun would be ‘what’. Unfortunately, in our abstruse line of work we often find ourselves looking not for any human agency but rather an inhuman one. That dictum you have ascribed to me about ‘eliminating the impossible’ seldom applies in our lives. We are far more likely to pursue the impossible than the improbable in our quest for truth. The impossible in this instance would be a beast capable of flight and possessed of a rudimentary sentience, one large and powerful enough to carry off a fully grown man, one that is nocturnal in its habits… Have I narrowed down the species for you yet?”
“It could be any one of a number. A byakhee springs to mind.”
“It is unsurprising that byakhees should be at the forefront of your thoughts, in light of our recent conversation. This piece of flesh, however, does not bear the hallmarks of that creature. Its stretchiness and flexibility to me suggest that it originates from a wing, and a byakhee’s wing is rigid and diaphanous like a wasp’s. We must consider a more bat-like candidate, I feel. Still none the wiser? Well, let us take a look at the other window Dr Joshi mentioned, the one via which the missing man allegedly removed himself from the premises.”
We traversed the remaining length of the corridor to the far end. On the way we were subjected to a barrage of howls and hectoring by the inmates. One of them, the resident of the furthermost cell along, hopped up and down and flapped his arms at us. I could not help but think that he was enacting, in his muddled, incoherent way, the passage of a winged creature in flight.
“We would appear to be in the company of an eyewitness,” said Holmes. “Did you see it, my good man? Did you see what entered through this window?”
The inmate continued hopping and flapping, oblivious to my companion’s entreaty. His boggling, unfocused eyes suggested he was far past the bounds of sanity.
“Entered?” I said. “But Dr Joshi said it was out of this window that the inmate went. He said nothing about something else coming in.”
“Oh, Watson, Watson! Dr Joshi was only speculating. Against blatant evidence to the contrary, what is more. Behold the glass on the floor here. Look how much there is of it. This is one of the most basic deductions anyone can make. A child could tell that the window was broken from the outside, not the inside. Even a Scotland Yarder.”
“Oh. Oh yes.”
“Making the window a point of ingress, not egress.” Holmes leaned out, craning his neck left and right. “There is, as Dr Joshi said, a drainpipe, but it is a good five yards distant. Conceivably one might leap from the window ledge, catch hold of it and clamber down, but it is not a risk I would wish to take. It is highly likely one would fall short of the drainpipe or fail to gain purchase upon it, with the inevitable disastrous consequences.”
“No face. No face.”
This, a muffled muttering, came from the cell opposite that of the flight-mimicking man. Its occupant stood erect at the door, as if at attention, with both hands clasped over his face.
“Like so,” the inmate said. “No face. How do I see? How do I smell? How do I eat? How do I talk? I have no face.”
“You have no face?” asked Holmes. “Or something you have seen has no face?”
“I cannot see. I did not see.” The man, for all the calm solemnity with which he spoke, was riven with fear. Every tendon in his frame was taut, like a wire under tension. “No face.”
Holmes pressed him further, to no avail. The inmate was lost in a sort of confused, dissociative state whereby he was identifying with a thing he had seen while denying he had ever seen it.
Abandoning the attempt, Holmes said, “Neither he nor his companion across the corridor is supplying what might be called unimpeachable testimony, but each in his way confirms my hypothesis, as does the condition of the window. A flying creature burst in, proceeded along the corridor, pulled open the door to a particular cell, and made off with the occupant, but not before slaying McBride, who courageously went to the inmate’s assistance. The aperture the beast created by throwing the attendant outside became a convenient means of departure, although in the process a tiny piece of its leathery wing was torn off. The monster in question is faceless, with a black cartilaginous hide and—”
“A nightgaunt,” I said, at last putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
“About time, old friend. A nightgaunt indeed. That is our culprit. At any rate, that is the instrument of the inmate’s abduction but not, I would suggest, the instigator. Nightgaunts, as a rule, shun mankind. They haunt remote, desolate spots and tend to kill any person who intrudes upon their territory. Yet it has been known for them to be trained to follow commands, like a falcon or gundog. If caught young enough and raised with the right regimen of punishment and reward, they are biddable.”
“Someone sent a tame nightgaunt to kidnap Conroy.”
“That is my reading of the situation,” said Holmes. “What remains to be established is who that someone might be.”
CHAPTER NINE
Most Irregular Irregulars
MIDNIGHT FOUND US STANDING ON THE FORESHORE of the Thames, up to our ankles in mud. The tide was at its lowest ebb, so that the river was reduced to a narrow trickle flecked with silvery glints of moonlight. We were by that spur of land known as the Isle of Dogs, an appendix of the East End mainly given over to docks. Wharf buildings loomed around us, along with the canted masts and funnels of ships that had been beached by the receding water.
During the daytime it was one of London’s busiest and most bustling areas, resounding to the cries of sailors and stevedores. At this late hour, however, all was still and hushed. The growl of the rest of the city could be heard, but distantly, at one remove, as though it emanated from another world. Meanwhile the slop of the river and the stench of the mud spoke of a more primordial epoch, an age before civilisation.
“Holmes,” I whispered. It seemed appropriate to keep one’s voice low. Not only did one not want to attract the attention of any bystanders in the vicinity, but conversation at the normal volume would have sounded jarringly loud.
“Not now, Watson. I know that tone. I have no desire for another of your lectures.”
“I simply wish to have it on record that I think this is a poor idea. There are better ways of conducting searches.”
“If you would rather be elsewhere,” came the somewhat acerbic reply, “then by all means go. I am perfectly capable of managing on my own.”
“That is not what I meant and you know it,” I said. “I do not approve of your consorting with the individuals whom you are about to muster, nor do I much care for the method by which you muster them.”
“Your approval is not required,” said Holmes, “and as for these ‘individuals’, why not use the collective name I have applied to them? It is, if nothing else, ironically amusing.”
“Your ‘Irregulars’. As disingenuous a euphemism as ever there was.”
“Yet apposite nonetheless. It has a nice poetic ring to it, too. And when an unobtrusive, city-wide manhunt is required, the Irregulars are a force to be recko
ned with. Their powers of scent alone put any bloodhound’s to shame. Even a certain lop-eared, waddling lurcher-spaniel cross of our acquaintance is no match for them.”
“But in order to employ them, it is not as if you simply have to reach into your pocket and produce a shilling or two. The cost is much greater and more personal.”
“Would you rather I engaged a gang of street Arabs, as in your tales, like some sort of law-abiding Fagin? Rough-hewn guttersnipes who will run honest errands in return for coin? How sentimental you sometimes are as an author, Watson. As though I would even think of marshalling an army of waifs and strays at Baker Street and expect them to do anything save disappear with my money – and Mrs Hudson’s best silver, no doubt – never to be seen again.”
With a snort of derision, Holmes drew from a leather portmanteau the object he had brought with him from our home. Passing me the empty bag to hold, he raised the item aloft. Moonbeams glinted off its intricate bronze contours and lent an eerie semblance of life to the trio of snake heads that adorned its front.
It was the diadem known as the Triophidian Crown, and the very sight of it sent my mind reeling back to the cavern beneath St Paul’s church, Shadwell, where Professor Moriarty had attempted to sacrifice us to Nyarlathotep at the foot of a vast subterranean pyramid. Not in fact one of the original Triophidian Crowns, of which just three had survived into the modern era, this particular one was Moriarty’s own homemade replica, albeit no less effective for that. Imbued with eldritch power, it gave the wearer mastery of all forms of reptile, including those of a hominid persuasion. Holmes had retained it since our defeat of Moriarty back in 1880 and employed it from time to time when certain types of reconnaissance and pursuit were required.
Now, as he lifted it up to place it upon his head, I endeavoured one last time to dissuade him from this course of action.
“The crown exacts a toll,” I said. “It imposes huge demands upon the energies of the user. You are, if I may say so, not at your healthiest. You have gone far too long without sleep and you have not eaten properly since the morning before last. As a physician—”
The Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities Page 8