“Not my physician.”
“I might as well be, given that you have no other. As I was saying, as a physician I would counsel you at least to postpone using the crown until after you have rested.”
“The trail of our missing inmate is still fresh. Now is the time to look for him, not later.”
“Then we should look for him by conventional means.”
“Why, when unconventional means will be more effective? The Irregulars may disconcert you, Watson, but they get the job done, and in the end that is all that matters.”
“Is it? And not your wellbeing?”
Holmes shrugged. It really seemed as though he no longer cared what happened to him. The war he was waging consumed him. Winning, at any price, was everything.
He lodged the Triophidian Crown atop his head. Almost immediately, skeins of green light began to flicker along its braided bronze coils and a weird throbbing hum filled the air. As Holmes’s brow furrowed in concentration, so the tendrils of light brightened and multiplied and the hum deepened. Soon the entire diadem was aglow, emitting a nimbus of coruscating emerald luminosity that was too bright to look at directly. The ripples of the nearby river were lit up greenly, while the mud in a twenty-yard radius around us took on a mossy viridian aspect.
It was Holmes’s own physical energy that was powering the crown, providing fuel for this uncanny display of light – and fuel, of course, is a finite resource. How soon, I wondered, before he would be drained? How much life force did he have to spare at present? I had seen him before in the immediate aftermath of using the Triophidian Crown. It left him exhausted even when he was in peak condition, and at this moment he was a man worn down to the nub.
This time, might the crown put him dangerously near death? Might it perhaps kill him?
“I call you forth,” said he in R’lyehian. His words rolled across the river to the far bank, echoing darkly back. “I summon you from your underground homes, your nests, your lairs. I will you to come. Answer my call! Make your way here with all haste, you denizens of the nether reaches of this city. Iä! Hear your master. Come hither to do my bidding. Iä! Iä!”
For a time, nothing happened. Holmes continued to chant. The Triophidian Crown continued to shine lambently, bathing the scene in green phosphorescence.
Then they arrived.
* * *
They emerged from the mouth of a sewer outfall some fifty yards upriver and made their way across the mud towards us at a slow, unhurried pace. Some were on their bellies, crawling, slithering. Those that walked upright did not move as a person should; their limbs seemed looser, their joints more flexible than any ordinary man’s.
They were snake men, Homo sapiens reptiliensis, members of a race Holmes and I had first encountered in the crypt of St Paul’s Shadwell, a race that had dwelled in London since time immemorial; arguably the city’s true natives, with a more deserving claim to proprietorship of this plot of land than any Englishman. They were of all shapes and varieties, some more serpentine than human, others more human than serpentine, with hides of every hue and often a beautiful patterning to their scales. A couple of them were hooded like cobras. One was a man from the waist up but the rest of him was thick, coiling tail that propelled him along sinuously.
In all they numbered perhaps twenty, and as they neared I was seized by the almost irresistible urge to run. I shifted my feet in the mud, which clung thickly around my boots and appeared, as in a nightmare, to hold me fast. My Webley was in my pocket. I slipped a hand about the grip, for reassurance. As long as Holmes exerted control over the snake men through the Triophidian Crown, we were safe. Should his influence on them waver for any reason, however, they might well choose to look upon us as prey. Then a few well-aimed rounds could mean the difference between survival and an ugly death.
“Halt,” said Holmes, still speaking in R’lyehian.
The snake men duly stopped in their tracks. Bulbous slitted eyes regarded us warily, appraisingly. These creatures’ instincts were telling them we were the enemy. The crown’s power was helping to keep their innate aggression in check, but still they were, in essence, wild animals and not to be trusted.
“We are here,” said one of them, the largest of the group. A forked tongue darted from his lipless maw, there then gone in an instant. He bore distinctive markings, bands of gold and black somewhat like a tiger’s stripes. “We have anssswered your sssummonsss.”
I am transliterating the snake men’s sibilant dialect of R’lyehian into an English equivalent. What I cannot convey on the page is how hideous and profane the language sounded coming from the snake man’s mouth, even more so than it did from any other being’s.
“I appreciate your attendance, W’gnns,” said Holmes.
The gold-and-black snake man tipped his head to one side, a gesture that appeared both submissive and sceptical. W’gnns was indeed his name, or as close an approximation of that guttural appellation as I can render in prose.
“I have a favour to ask,” Holmes continued.
“Asssk it,” said W’gnns, although he seemed to know as well as Holmes and I did that it was no favour; it was a command that needed obeying, and no refusal of it would be brooked. “You have the crown that compelsss. We mussst sssubmit.”
“I seek a man. He was spirited away from a place of confinement by a nightgaunt. It is the latter I wish you to track, in the expectation that it will lead to the whereabouts of the former.”
“Nightgaunt.” W’gnns uttered the word with a trepidation that was shared by his fellows. One of the snake men moaned, a couple of them cringed, and I understood then that even monsters found some things monstrous. There was a hierarchy amongst horrors.
“Here.” Holmes took from his pocket the scrap of nightgaunt wing, which he had wrapped in a handkerchief. “You may derive its scent from this.”
The snake men gathered round the ragged bit of flesh. Several flicked their forked tongues at it, while others simply sniffed with their noses as an ordinary human might.
“Got it?”
The snake men nodded.
“The nightgaunt will have delivered its cargo somewhere reasonably close by. Large and powerful though it is, the creature cannot carry a fully grown man far in a single flight. Therefore its destination will be still within the bounds of London or, if not, only a little further afield.”
“We will ssseek the nightgaunt’sss trail. We will pursssue it throughout the ssssity, remaining in the damp, ssshadowy placesss, the tunnelsss and channelsss and crevicesss that are our realm, ssstaying ever unssseen. Asss long asss the nightgaunt hasss left dissscernible ssspoor, we will find where it went.”
“Very good. I will meet you here, at this same hour, every night for the next three nights. If by the third night you have not met with success, I will consider your duty discharged and release you from service.”
“Mossst graciousss of you, Missster Holmesss,” W’gnns said with more than a soupçon of archness. “At leassst our ssslavery will not be permanent. We thank you for that.”
“Now look here.” Holmes’s spine stiffened and his eyes flashed sternly. “Have you forgotten who it was who unearthed and reopened the onyx obelisk that kept you and your people trapped permanently underground? Who secured your escape from that cavern network that was your entire world and allowed you the full run of London’s subterranea? Who released you from your subservience to Nyarlathotep and your reliance on cannibalism to survive?”
“You. But only after imposing sssertain caveatsss we mussst abide by.”
“Yes, that you take all pains to avoid showing yourselves to humans and that you catch and kill no living creature larger than a cat for sustenance. Thanks to me, you can breathe fresh air. You can emerge under cover of darkness, as now, and see the stars and moon that were hitherto denied you. Remember that, W’gnns. Remember that I am your benefactor. I have given you far more than I will ever ask in return.”
Suitably chastened, W’gnns lowered
his head. “You are right of courssse, sssir. I forgot my place. I beg your forgivenessss. I and my fellowsss ssshall comply with your demandsss.”
“Good. Off with you, then. We shall rendezvous in twenty-four hours.”
The snake men departed with varying degrees of haste, some trotting, some trudging. W’gnns was the last to leave, sidling back to the sewer outfall, head still bent in humility. Had he been human I might have felt pity for him as the recipient of a tongue-lashing from Holmes; might have felt a certain kinship, too. As it was, I was only too glad to see the back of him. Not only did the snake men remind me of our experiences in Shadwell fifteen years earlier, they also brought back vividly the horrors I had witnessed in the lost city of Ta’aa some months before that, during my service in Afghanistan, when I and a contingent of soldiers had run afoul of a race of Cthulhu-worshipping lizard men, the snake men’s near relatives.
As if on cue, my shoulder injury – the legacy of a lizard man’s slashing talons – began to ache. I worked my arm in a circle, alleviating some of the discomfort but not all.
“Old wound giving you pain?” said Holmes as he removed the crown from his head and passed it to me.
“Some,” I replied, stowing the diadem away in the portmanteau. “I have to say, Holmes, I am still not happy that you freed the snake men.”
“Why ever not? The Irregulars have proved useful on numerous occasions. That alone justifies my decision.”
“But what if one day they cease to be content with staying out of sight? What if they succumb to their baser impulses and start attacking people?”
“They are more sophisticated than you give them credit for. We have a pact, the snake men and I, and they have so far kept their end of it. Moreover, upon each encounter with the Irregulars I reinforce the pecking order. Through the crown, W’gnns and company are firmly reminded who is their master and who may, if the need arises, quash them. They convey this lesson to their fellows, and the status quo is maintained.”
“Singlehandedly you hold an entire species to ransom.”
“You anticipate a rebellion in the future? A popular uprising amongst Homo sapiens reptiliensis?” Holmes essayed a wan smile. “Only if I give them an inch of latitude, which I will never… never…”
His voice trailed off. He sank to his knees.
“Holmes!” I cried, rushing to his side. “Holmes, speak to me.”
“I am fine, Watson,” replied he, feebly. “A momentary light-headedness. Help me up, would you?”
I lodged my good shoulder beneath his armpit and hoisted him upright, but he was more or less dead weight. Together, side by side, we staggered to the bank. There, I hauled him onto dry land and laid him out flat, before wading back through the mud to retrieve the portmanteau. Tempted though I was simply to abandon the bag and let the rising river sweep it and its contents out to sea, I knew Holmes would never forgive me if I did.
By the time I had returned to him my companion was sitting up, but he looked unsteady and his face had gone so white it resembled a skull. We found our way to the main road and I managed to hail a passing hansom, but the driver baulked when he saw the condition Holmes was in.
“Drunk, is he? I’m not ’aving anyone in my cab who’s falling-down drunk. I like my seats clean, I do.”
I thrust a one-pound note into his hand, which promptly changed his tune, and within half an hour we were at Baker Street and Holmes and I were climbing the seventeen steps to our rooms, I all but carrying him up them.
CHAPTER TEN
The Near-Dead Detective
FOR THREE DAYS HOLMES WAS A DEPLORABLE spectacle. He lay abed, flitting in and out of consciousness. When asleep he was inert, corpse-like. The rise and fall of his chest was only just perceptible and his pulse was a fickle thing, hard to discern even by my experienced touch. When awake, he scarcely had the strength to raise his head from the pillow. I spooned soup between his lips every time the opportunity presented itself and gave him doses of various patent tonics. The occasions when I myself needed rest, I left him in the care of Mrs Hudson, with strict instructions that she was to rouse me if he so much as intimated he wanted to get dressed and venture out. I told her that he had contracted some form of “coolie disease” while working at a case down at Rotherhithe, in an alley near the river. It was either Tapanuli fever or the black Formosa corruption, and he would recover of his own accord as long as he did not exert himself.
“Those sound horrible,” our landlady declared with a shudder. “Are they contagious?”
I assured her that they were not, which was no word of a lie since both ailments were entirely fabricated.
By the third day Holmes had regained the power of speech and used that facility to berate me roundly.
“How could you have let me languish here, Watson? You know I was supposed to be at the Isle of Dogs both last night and the night before. W’gnns will be wondering what has become of me. He and the other Irregulars may well have abandoned their search prematurely, on the assumption that I am no longer interested in learning the result. Oh, this is a fine debacle. All that trouble, all that effort, for nothing.”
“That effort, as you put it, almost killed you, Holmes. You overtaxed yourself intolerably, using the crown.”
“Nonsense.”
“Really? Tell me then. How do you feel right now?”
“Fit as a fiddle.”
“Prove it. Get out of bed.”
Holmes propelled himself up to a seated position, but only by enlisting the aid of the bedstead for support and with considerable exertion. The moment he tried to stand, he nearly passed out. “Heavens above,” he said with a grim, self-deprecating laugh. “I have rather overdone it, have I not?”
“That is something of an understatement.”
“Yet I must still make the meeting with the Irregulars tonight. If they have intelligence for me, I need to know it. What if they have located our abductee? He may not stay in one place for long. He may since have been moved out of London, beyond the Irregulars’ ambit.”
“Holmes,” I said, “you are in no fit state to go out gallivanting in the chilly night air. Nor, for that matter, have you recuperated sufficiently to use the crown again with any surety of safety.”
“There is no alternative,” he insisted. “Unless…” He fixed his bleary grey gaze upon me. “Unless,” he said, “someone were to go in my stead.”
* * *
Thus it was that I wound up back at the Isle of Dogs, ankle-deep in mud again and with the Triophidian Crown in my hands.
I had even less desire to be there this time than the last. I had remonstrated strenuously with Holmes for over an hour, maintaining that I was neither willing nor able to use the crown. I could not stand the thought of confronting the snake men alone, never mind attempting to impose my will upon them. I would rather be dipped in tar and set alight.
Yet somehow I had capitulated. Holmes had told me I was braver than I made out and possessed of a robust constitution that was more than adequate to the task. Whether I liked it or not, these blandishments did help sway me.
The sky was clear save for a herd of fat clouds, which traipsed westward across the stars. The moon hung low and full. The hands on my watch stood at twenty past twelve. I eyed the sewer outfall, praying fervently but guiltily that the snake men would failt to appear. Disappointed twice by the non-appearance of Holmes, they would not bother a third time.
Alas, my hopes were dashed. Sure enough, the Irregulars crawled from the aperture, the distinctive black-and-gold frame of W’gnns to the fore.
With nervous hands I lifted the Triophidian Crown and lowered it into position. I braced myself.
Holmes had given me some idea of what to expect. “You will feel a kind of mental surge,” he had said, “like a rush of blood to the head. You will hear the crown speak to you. It has a scratchy, wheedling sort of voice. One might liken it to the voice of an inner demon. I warn you, whatever you do, pay it no heed. The crown wishes to t
ake command of you. You must instead take command of it.”
This seemed fanciful stuff, yet I had no doubt it was a fair summation of the facts. Holmes did not indulge in airy imprecision.
Sure enough, no sooner was the crown seated in place than I became aware of a soft whispering, like a tickle within my brain, insistent and insinuating. I cannot accurately reproduce here what the voice said. I am not certain it even used words as such. It was more an urge, a compulsion. The crown was inviting me to surrender to it. Hypnotically it crooned and lilted, singing a sinister lullaby. I felt as though it would be to my benefit to give in. I should offer up my belly, like a complaisant dog. I should extend my neck so that my throat might be slit open like a sacrificial lamb’s.
No.
I may have uttered the negative aloud. I may only have thought it. Either way, I made clear my refusal. I knew what the crown wanted from me: my life force. It wished to latch onto me in the manner of a vampire and suck until I was drained.
No, I would not be the Triophidian Crown’s willing victim. I would not be parasitised.
The voice quailed before my resolve. Now, all at once, the crown was submissive. It was eager to please. What did I want from it?
I directed my gaze upon the approaching snake men. The crown knew its duty. It could grant me control over them. All it asked for in return was a little of my energy, a mere sample, a taste…
This was untrue, of course. The Triophidian Crown never took “just a little”. Invariably it exacted its pound of flesh – or more – from the wearer. The wearer simply had to ensure that he got something in return, making the crown earn its keep.
Green light began to radiate from the diadem. The humming from its bronze coils drilled through my skull, causing my teeth to vibrate in their sockets and my sinuses to click like crickets. I regarded the snake men with fresh eyes. Suddenly it seemed as though I understood them. I knew not only their thoughts but their way of thinking. Some deep-seated part of my brain had an affinity with theirs. We were strange siblings, they and I. Somewhere far back in our evolutionary pasts, eons ago, we had been more alike than different. We shared a common ancestry.
The Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities Page 9