We changed onto the Metropolitan Railway at Brompton Road, and then changed again onto a separate branch of that same line at, ironically, Baker Street. Still underground, we began making our journey out of London.
The nature of our travelling companions changed slightly as we left the centre of the city and hurtled towards the outskirts, with suited and top-hatted gentlemen being replaced by men in moleskin or corduroy jackets and wearing old, faded bowlers. Suddenly, we left the tunnel behind us and began moving through deep cuttings running parallel to roads and houses on the surface. Several of the men dressed in the same manner as us were sitting alone, not making eye contact and not getting off at any of the stations.
“We are, some of us at least, going to the same place,” Holmes murmured. “There appears to be on these evenings a back and forth between the restaurant and this other location of nocturnal revels near Wembley Park, accessed by a part of the Underground not available to the general public.”
“A covert branch line? Do you really think so?”
“We shall have to see.” He paused. “The Duke of Buckinghamshire privately financed his own side-branch from the Metropolitan Railway some years ago, and other landowners have done the same. With enough money and enough authority, anything is possible.”
The night was quite clear, and a few stars blinked wanly in patches of sky I could glimpse above the cutting through which we ran. At the stop before Wembley Park a guard entered the carriage. I reached for the stub of my ticket, but Holmes placed his hand on my arm.
“Observe,” he said quietly.
As the guard passed down the carriage some people showed him tickets, but others opened their clenched fists in a more secretive manner to show him black Yale keys, of the kind Holmes had found in Lord Elmsfield’s pocket and which we had used to gain access to the hidden restaurant. When the guard reached us, Holmes showed him that same key. The guard nodded as if he knew us, and continued on his way down the carriage.
“We have passed muster,” Holmes observed. “Let us see what transpires.”
The train pulled into Wembley Park station, but before anybody could get on or off a whistle blew several times from the platform, and a voice shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen, this train is being taken out of service following a defect within the engine. It will be moved to the sidings, where there will be no opportunity to disembark. Please leave now and wait on the platform for the next train onwards to all destinations.”
Several people stood up and opened the doors to get off. Prewarned, I remained in my seat, as did Holmes. Three other men in our carriage also stayed.
The guard appeared again, walking swiftly down the centre of the carriage. As he passed each one of us he clicked a mechanical counting device in his hand.
Less than a minute later the train huffed, puffed, and pulled off again, and if there was anybody on the platform who was surprised that there were still some of us sitting inside, I suspect they probably forgot the matter before they even got home.
The atmosphere in the carriage was palpably more tense now. I felt a jerking and a bucking as we crossed over several sets of points, and the train swerved to the left. The main cutting disappeared, and a few seconds later we were inside another tunnel.
“Probably built as part of the preparations for the sports and exhibition centre,” Holmes murmured, “and then abandoned. Someone else has taken it on, and expanded its operations. A few bribes in the right places, and nobody is any the wiser that a whole train has been borrowed for a few hours.”
I felt the train heading down an incline for a few minutes, before I saw through the windows that we had entered a large underground terminus, with an arched roof of cast iron held up by pillars. The train slowed to a halt. We took the nearest door onto the platform, directly by a sign that said “The Fields of Elysium”.
“Lord Elmsfield’s phrase,” I murmured.
“And the reason he was killed,” Holmes replied, equally low.
There were ten of us on the platform now, all dressed in similarly casual clothes. The train we had just left reversed out of the station, wreathing us all momentarily in wet, warm steam.
We followed the other men and found ourselves in a long tunnel, floored in timber and lined with red tiles and illuminated with gaslights. I reflected as we walked that this must be what it was like to be a corpuscle of blood travelling through an artery or a vein.
Ahead of us the tunnel abruptly turned left through ninety degrees. I could hear a sound from up ahead, a roaring of a crowd simultaneously upraised and downcast, similar to the one I was familiar with from rugby matches where one side scored a try, to equal cheers and boos. The red tiles seemed to pulsate, and it took me a moment to work out that it was an illusion caused by the quivering flames being reflected off them. I could smell something as well, an odour that reminded me in part of the camel stables I was familiar with from my time in Afghanistan, in part of my visits to the London Zoological Gardens with certain ladies of my acquaintance, and in part of the bare-knuckle boxing matches to which I had once been partial. That last recognition was brought on by the scent of sweat, of men terrified for their lives, and blood. A great deal of blood.
“The Elysian Fields,” I said, bracing myself.
“Where Achilles and Odysseus and all the other heroes of Greek antiquity ended up. A place also where great banquets are held of the finest food.” Holmes glanced at me, and his face was as grave as I had ever seen it. “ἐς ἔλεγχον, ἅπας κίνδυνος,” he said.
There was still enough of my classroom Greek left to recall Pindar’s line from the Nemean Odes: For testing is sheer danger.
We turned the corner.
The space we found ourselves in was circular in shape, and the size of a rugby stadium. Unlike a rugby stadium it was mostly beneath ground, being surrounded by walls of rock, but although the walls curved over us there was a circle of sky directly overhead. I found myself imagining that I was in a crater, like those on the moon. Presumably that circle of sky marked an area of ground that was in a wasteland, or surrounded by walls, so that it could not be seen by anyone locally.
A carnival had been set up inside the crater, with brightly striped tents sprouting up from the hard-packed soil like bizarre and huge mushrooms. In between the tents, burning torches sat in iron holders which had been plunged into the ground. Men moved between the tents. The whole thing had a strangely childish, festival air – an air belied by the excited shouts from inside. Over it all lay that animal-house stench I had been smelling ever since we had left the sidings.
“Is this really what I think it is?” I asked Holmes as we walked towards the nearest tent, attempting to appear as if we had been here before and knew what we were doing.
“It is,” he said in a strangely flat voice. “From simple horse-racing to the racing of camels across London Bridge, gambling is a human urge, and there is always an urge to escalate, to bet on something that has not been bet upon before. You yourself, Watson, have a history of attending illegal bare-knuckle fights. I say that not in accusation, but to make a point. We have both, during the course of our cases, had reason to be at illegal cockfights, dogfights, and even bear-baiting. Some men will bet on anything, given the chance. This is merely the final outcome of that misdirected urge in the male character.”
A scream cut across the torch-illumined darkness: not a human scream, but one of an animal – perhaps a big cat. I had heard similar sounds in the mountains of Afghanistan from hunting snow leopards.
“But the logistics alone!” I protested. We were almost at the entrance to the tent now. “Where do they get all the food for these animals from?”
“Remember the surprising lack of cab horses in London?” Holmes grimaced. “I suspect we have discovered where they have been going.”
“And the… the remains, after one of these disgusting bouts is completed?” Before my friend could reply, I exclaimed, “The restaurant! Of course! An ideal means of di
sposing of the carcasses of the losers.” The inevitable conclusion of my thought processes struck me with the force of a steam locomotive. “But that means the ‘specials’ are—”
Holmes glanced at me, and I had never seen his face so grave. “If the losing animals are served up as the ordinary mains, then the losing men are the ‘specials’. Cannibalism in the midst of London society. It is hard to credit, but there it is.”
“But surely,” I could hardly string together a complete sentence, I was so shocked, “the legality alone—”
“Cannibalism is not illegal under English law. Remember the case twelve years ago of the four-man crew aboard the English yacht, the Mignonette, sailing from England to Australia, who were shipwrecked with almost no food? I have it extensively documented in my files. When the seventeen-year-old cabin boy became ill, two of the men, Stephens and Dudley by name, decided to kill and eat him. Five days later they were rescued, returned to England, and both Stephens and Dudley were charged with murder. The third man was not charged, despite having admitted to eating his companion’s flesh. Any case where a cannibal has been charged, it is with murder, not anthropophagy. Cannibalism is not illegal in our great nation, although repugnant to the majority. The rich and entitled, however, have always made their own morals.” He nodded towards the opening of the tent, which was only a few feet away. “And what is happening in there is not, I suspect, murder by any legal definition of the term.”
“Surely the… participants… are not doing this voluntarily? They must have been coerced! We should call the police!”
“You and I both know, Watson, that desperate men will do anything for money.” He shook his head as he reached for the flap of the tent. “Remember The Times a few days ago bemoaning the lack of decent labourers trained in the art of underground construction? I wonder if many of the workers who constructed this very facility were kept on by their erstwhile employers with the promise of large winnings if they could prevail against a series of animal opponents, little knowing the types of animals against which they would be pitted.”
He ducked and passed through the entrance.
“And those numbers on the menu in the restaurant?” I called after him, regardless of whether my voice was heard or not. “The ones that weren’t prices?”
“Simply the numbers of kills,” he called back over his shoulder. “A tiger that has killed seven men is apparently tastier than one that has killed two. Presumably the reverse applies as well – a man with numerous kills to his credit before he was finally taken down is a prime culinary draw.”
The temperature rose sharply as we entered the tent, and I found that we were pushing through an almost palpable miasma of smoke, vapour, and more unpleasant, throat-catching odours. The arrangement was as thus: a circular pit had been dug in the centre of the tent, or the tent constructed around the same, and a fence of inward-pointing wooden stakes had been placed lining the edge of the pit, with sufficient gaps between them that the crowd assembled around the fence could see through and over it with ease. The crowd was, as I already knew, composed of the elite of society, those scions of wealth and power who ran the country.
It was, however, the pit that was the focus of my attention.
The circumference of the pit would have accommodated our rooms at 221B Baker Street. On two sides, steep slopes gave access, each of them now barred by a heavy locked gate. At the bottom of one slope cowered a lad who could barely be out of his teens, with thin, protruding ribs and a terrified expression. I could not help but note the absence of any scars on his body: he was new to this “game”, and his general cowering and already defeated demeanour confirmed this. He held a shaking spear out towards his opponent.
Across the other side of the pit was a polar bear. It was malnourished as well, and its formerly white hair was yellow and matted in those areas where it had not actually fallen out. Its rolling eyes suggested that captivity had driven it mad, and its long claws were perfectly capable of raking the lad’s intestines from his body with one sweep. Its teeth were bared, diseased gums exposed, and I could see several gaps where some teeth had fallen out.
I glanced around the edge of the pit. The expressions I saw there were hardly less feral than the one on the muzzle of the polar bear. Money was being waved in the air – thick wads of it – and bets recorded in notebooks by men in top hats who stood on stools overlooking the baying crowd.
I glanced again towards the boy. His gaze scanned the crowd, desperately seeking someone, anyone who might provide help.
“Please,” he screamed, “I’m gonna die! I got a girl, she’s in the family way! I just wanted the money. I didn’t realise I’d ’ave to do this! Please, for the sake of my girl an’ my kid, someone get me out of ’ere!”
I felt a hand grab my arm.
“Don’t do anything,” Holmes hissed. “We must not bring attention to ourselves. We have to leave, and—”
“And what?” I snarled. “No crime here? Apart from reading the Riot Act, what can the authorities do?”
“Don’t risk your life! This is not the only tent. You can’t save them all!”
“It’s the only tent I am standing in.”
He shook his head angrily. “You are worth more than—”
I tore my arm free. “Than that boy? You know better than that, Holmes.” I jerked my head towards the crowd, who were laughing at the boy’s desperate entreaties. “They are just as much the animals as the creature down there. We have to prove that we are better than that.”
Holmes nodded, and I pushed my way through the crowd. The stakes jutted out at perhaps a forty-five-degree angle. Without calculating, I jumped onto the nearest ones. They immediately sagged beneath me, sending me sliding down into the pit, to cheers from the crowd. I hit the ground hard, knocking the wind momentarily from my lungs.
The bear snarled at me and took a step forward. I sidled away until I was standing in front of the lad.
“Give me the spear!”
“Thanks, guv!”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, and over his shoulder I saw Holmes at the gate. He had retrieved a crowbar and hammer from somewhere and was trying hard to pry open the padlock.
I looked up at the crowd. They appeared elated with my arrival. Even larger wagers were being made, but I had no intention of turning up on the menu of the hidden restaurant.
My mind flashed back to a campfire in Afghanistan, and a meal of goat stew shared with the elders of one of the tribes that had decided to take no part in the conflict. I recalled how the conversation had flowed haltingly back and forth, and I recalled in particular the advice given to me by one hunter in the event that I ever came across one of the Asiatic black bears that were endemic to the mountains and woods there.
I had thought it unlikely I would ever need that advice in Afghanistan, and if you had told me then that I would one day need it within a few miles of Trafalgar Square I would have laughed at you.
I was not laughing now.
I heard the clink of the padlock falling off, and Holmes’s voice calling the lad, to a general chorus of sudden disapproval from the crowd, who did not wish to be deprived of their sport. I heard the lad scamper away, and I prepared to back away up the slope, but the polar bear chose that moment to rush me, jaws agape.
The crowd gasped as one. Perhaps I should have been paralysed by fear, as I am sure many of the poor unfortunates who had previously faced this and other beasts in the dark carnival had been, but I was not. I had confronted Pashtun warriors in the past, amongst many other adventures, and if I had not been scared then, I would not be scared now. Later, perhaps, if I survived, there would be time for my heart to race and my mouth to dry up, but right at that moment I knew that only cool-headedness, steady hands, and my memory of that campfire talk would get me through.
Time itself seemed to slow down, and I found that I could make out every detail of the creature, from the individual hairs of its pelt to the wounds on its flanks, presumably caused by
previous fights. Those wounds looked inflamed to me. I doubted there were any veterinarians in that terrible place. I wondered momentarily if the diners back in the restaurant knew the quality of the meat they were eating, and if they really cared.
The animal’s claws gouged at the ground as it approached, tearing up the hard-packed earth.
Bears attack from above. That is what I had been told by that Afghan hunter. They rear up on their hind legs and rake your body with their foreclaws before falling on you and using their teeth. That moment is the only one you have.
I hoped to high heaven that polar bears followed the same habits as their Asian counterparts.
Ten feet. Six feet. I held my ground, spear extended.
The bear’s head was on a level with my chest. Its jaws could easily have encompassed my entire head.
It seemed to hunch back, then rose up to its full, immense height, towering over me with its clawed forelegs extended up above its head, poised to slice down at me. It threw its head back and bellowed.
I took two steps forward and lunged up with the spear, catching the creature in the soft tissue beneath its lower jaw. Surprised and wounded in the midst of its attack, it tried to get back onto all fours, but as it brought its head down the spear’s head pushed up, right through the bear’s tongue, the roof of its mouth and, critically, its small brain. As the animal fell, I threw myself to one side. I could hear it whimpering, even as the blood cascaded from its mouth, and I felt a moment’s sympathy for the poor creature. But only a moment. It had been abused, and terribly so, by its masters. Perhaps this was the best way out for it.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back. Glancing up, I could see that it was Holmes and the lad we had rescued. They pulled me up the slope, where they laid me down so that I could climb unsteadily to my own feet.
Sherlock Holmes Page 24