Cauchemar shoved it open again with a thrust of his fist, and out stepped Holmes, dusty and dishevelled but smiling.
“A brief but not unpleasant stay amongst the departed,” he said, “though I have no desire to make it a permanent condition until many years hence. Happily none of my fellow ‘guests’ had been too recently interred, otherwise the accommodation might have been far less congenial.” He brushed a cobweb nonchalantly from his sleeve.
“Good Lord, Holmes,” I said. “I thought we’d... I mean, you’d... Dash it all, man, I was certain I’d seen the last of you.”
“I am not that easy to kill. Note that well, Watson. I am as crafty as a cat and have almost as many lives. Baron Cauchemar.” He presented himself to the armoured goliath beside me. “I owe you a debt of gratitude for rescuing me. I would shake your hand, but I fear my hand would not survive the experience.”
Cauchemar gave something that approximated a bow.
“Glad to be of service, Mr Holmes. Now I must take my leave. I have been somewhat incommoded by the night’s events.”
“You mean your armour has suffered damage and requires repair.”
“That is so. It is not functioning at full capacity, and while there is little likelihood of it seizing up or overheating, I must nevertheless shut down the engine and overhaul the whole as soon as possible.”
“Understood. Yet I would wish to engage in further discussion with you at some stage, Baron. We are, at present, both pursuing similar goals, if from slightly different trajectories, and were we to pool our information, I fancy it would –”
Bang!
The sniper!
I had assumed, erroneously, that we were no longer at risk from our unseen marksman. I had imagined that he had fled the scene in conjunction with Torrance, Gedge and Kaylock.
The bullet, this time, was not directed at Cauchemar but at Holmes. Only by some miracle did it fail to find its mark. Possibly the haze of dust that still hung over the rubble-strewn graveyard foiled the assassin’s aim. A section of the frieze on the mausoleum wall disintegrated, just adjacent to Holmes’s ear. He and I both fell into a crouch and scrambled on hands and knees round to the other side of the stone structure.
“You told me it was going to be a long, arduous night, Holmes,” I said as we sheltered behind the mausoleum. “By God, you were right.”
“Sometimes I wish I weren’t,” replied he.
The bullets continued to come our way with monotonous regularity. The sniper had us pinned down. Aside from the mausoleum there was precious little cover immediately around us. If we moved from where we were, our would-be killer would have a clear field of fire. I attempted to deter him with a couple of shots of my own, but I was firing blind and my Mark III Adams did not have nearly the range of his rifle. I might as well have been peppering him with pebbles from a slingshot.
Baron Cauchemar again proved to be our salvation.
“Gentlemen, I can get you out of here.”
“That would be most welcome,” said Holmes.
Cauchemar enjoined us to go ahead of him. With him interposed between us and the sniper, we were more or less shielded from the gunfire. He herded us, much in the manner of a hen with her chicks, towards the hole he had created in the ground when staging his dramatic entrance. The aperture was partly filled with débris, but not to the extent of this being an obstacle. The sides were reasonably shallow-angled, too. Holmes and I slid down into it, our ears resounding to the gong-like chime of bullets striking Cauchemar’s back.
The last section of the descent was sheer. Pitch-blackness beckoned below. There was nothing for it but to throw caution to the winds and jump. Holmes leapt, and I, trusting in his judgement, did the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE SUBTERRENE
It was a drop of some ten feet onto flagstones. Ignorant as I was in regard to how far down I was falling, I landed awkwardly, jarring my heel. As I straightened, hissing in pain, Holmes’s hand reached out from the darkness and yanked me towards him. A split-second later, Baron Cauchemar thundered down on the very spot where I had been standing, missing me by a whisker. Had he plunged on top of me with his armoured bulk, there is no question which of us would have come off worse.
Holmes groped inside his coat to produce his pocket-lantern, but Cauchemar saved him the bother. A beam of light shot forth from a high-wattage electric bulb implanted beneath a panel in his chest. Its incandescence illuminated a catacomb with a low, vaulted ceiling.
“This way,” Cauchemar said, and in the absence of a viable alternative, Holmes and I did as bidden and followed him.
A tunnel had been bored through the catacomb wall, leading down into the earth at a gentle incline. We entered, I still limping somewhat on my sore foot. There was just headroom enough in the tunnel that Cauchemar could pass along it without bending.
“Your doing?” said Holmes to Cauchemar.
“These hands of mine make for efficient spades.”
“You are like some large steel-jacketed mole, burrowing.”
“It is one of my many attributes. Watch your footing.”
The tunnel floor was desperately uneven and treacherous with roots and loose rocks. Luckily, it did not go on for long. Within twenty paces we had arrived at its exit. An obnoxious stench told me all I needed to know about where we now were.
“The sewers,” I sighed. “Again.”
“You need not concern yourself, Dr Watson,” said Cauchemar. “An unpleasant environment it may be but you won’t be exposed to it for long. We don’t have far to travel.”
“That’s all very well for you to say, ensconced in all that armour. What I wouldn’t give for a pair of fisherman’s waders. And a muffler.”
“You’ll have to forgive Watson, Baron,” said Holmes. “He grows crotchetier with each passing year. I shouldn’t be surprised if one day soon he retires to Tunbridge Wells and spends the rest of his life penning choleric letters to the editor of the Daily Telegraph. What is it about domestic bliss that makes a man so intolerant of inconvenience and hardship? I suppose the clue is in the word ‘bliss’. That state makes all others dismal by comparison.”
“I say, old chap, that’s rather unfair,” I declared. “You must not bring Mary into this. If I am less than overjoyed about trudging through human waste, or catching a chill in a graveyard at night, or having some madman with a rifle try to take the top of my head off, that is entirely my own consideration. My marital status has nothing to do with it.”
“I am not decrying marriage, Watson, yours or anyone’s. On the contrary, marriage is a noble and necessary institution. It is not for me; but in most instances it is the making of a man. It transforms the callow, unruly youth into an upstanding, productive member of society. With that, however, comes a certain, shall we say, softening? The groom becomes the unwitting captive of his bride, and is tamed, like a circus beast. ‘I want’ becomes ‘yes, dear’. The growl of the bachelor diminishes to a miaow. It is as inevitable as it is regrettable.”
“My vigour remains undimmed,” I protested. “If an element of caution has crept into my personality, that is only to be expected. I no longer live solely to please myself. I am a husband, and shall one day, God willing, be a father.” Alas, an expectation forever denied me. “There is more to think about now than just myself.”
“And that is a wholly commendable attitude. You seem to take what I am saying as a personal slight.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” Holmes grinned slyly. “But it has been a useful distraction. For, look. We have walked some distance, and have arrived where Cauchemar is taking us, and you were so busy bickering with me, you ceased to pay attention to the disagreeable nature of our surroundings.”
“Holmes. Why, you... you...”
“Scoundrel?”
“Yes!”
“All in a good cause. Now, what’s this?”
The beam of Cauchemar’s chest-mounted light fell on the outline of something
cylindrical and metallic that filled almost the entirety of the sewer tunnel ahead. It was tapered at the front, similar in its streamlined shape to a rifle cartridge, and was constructed from solid plates held together by rivets. Rows of huge knurled wheels projected at intervals all round its circumference, and a series of viewing portals extended across its front, through which I glimpsed a set of controls and what can only be described as a driving seat.
“Some kind of vehicle,” I said.
“The selfsame vehicle which left those grooves we observed in the wall of the sewer at Shadwell,” said Holmes. “This is how the baron gets around London unseen and so swiftly. Am I correct, Baron?”
“You are, Mr Holmes.” Cauchemar unlatched a large hatch, opening up the nose of the vehicle. “I call it the Subterrene. A submarine that travels under the ground rather than under the sea, powered by steam.”
“It is like a thing from a Jules Verne novel,” I professed. “But then so, in your way, are you, Baron.”
“I’ll take both those remarks as a compliment. You go aboard first, gentlemen.”
We stepped inside the extraordinary machine, finding just enough space for ourselves between the driving seat and the bulkhead behind. Cauchemar joined us, closing the hatch after him. It was a snug fit, all three of us in the confines of that “wheelhouse”. The vehicle had apparently not been built with a view to transporting passengers in comfort. It was made for one.
Cauchemar lowered himself into the driving seat, which was sufficiently large and reinforced to accommodate his dimensions and weight. The controls, likewise, were proportionate to the size of his huge, gauntleted hands. He threw a couple of levers and a large knife-switch, and from behind Holmes and me came the hiss of gas burning, the rattle of pipes heating up and the rumble of steam coalescing. An instrument panel lit up. Needles on gauges started to creep round. Indicator bulbs brightened.
“You might want to hold on to something,” Cauchemar cautioned, and we did as he suggested. “The Subterrene doesn’t afford the smoothest of rides.”
The vehicle was vibrating all around us like a greyhound in the trap, shuddering with pent-up energy, which Cauchemar released by means of twisting a stopcock valve. All at once we were lurching forwards. Powerful headlamps lit up the curvature of the sewer. Brickwork shot by us at increasing velocity.
The acceleration was so tremendous, it pushed us back against the bulkhead. The Subterrene juddered and rocked as it rocketed along. Now and then came a grinding sound from outside as the vehicle wended its way bumpily around a bend, wheels digging into brick.
Whenever we approached a junction, Cauchemar deftly spun a set of calibrated brass knobs which applied a brake to certain of the wheels. The Subterrene slewed in the desired direction and entered a new tunnel.
“Remarkable,” said Holmes, voice raised above the vehicle’s clamour. “To have made such good use of a relative novelty such as the sewer system. And unlike the underground railway there are no tracks to follow. The Subterrene may go anywhere, shuttling back and forth, left and right, at liberty.”
“I spent six months familiarising myself with the tunnels,” said Cauchemar, “and establishing which ones were navigable and which not. They have proved highly convenient. At the same time I was testing the Subterrene’s ‘sewer-worthiness’. It has more than passed muster.”
The vehicle’s speed I must say I found disconcerting. We were plunging headlong through those sewers at a rate of knots, faster than any train I had been on, and with seemingly less security and restraint. Baron Cauchemar handled the controls in a manner which ought to have inspired confidence, yet I couldn’t help thinking that if we crashed, it was all right for him inside his armoured shell. He was well protected. What about us frail humans sheathed in mere textiles? We would end up hideously broken and mangled. I had once tended to the victims of a ghastly railway accident on the Southampton to Dorchester line, while I was at the Army Medical School at Netley, us trainees being called in to assist doctors at the local hospital who were in danger of being overwhelmed by the numbers of casualties, so I know whereof I speak.
Finally the Subterrene began to decelerate, our ultimate destination near. Cauchemar brought the vehicle to a halt in a side-tunnel that branched off a larger one. We were beside a walkway raised above the flow of effluent. He deactivated the engine, quieting its din, then opened the hatch.
Out we all went, across the walkway and up to a vast, thick door of the kind one might normally see guarding the entrance to a bank vault. Where we were, how far below the surface, in what part of London, I had no idea. There was no way of telling, not one visual clue to help.
Cauchemar spun a locking wheel and the door swung inwards. Holmes and I gamely followed him through into a high-ceilinged, windowless chamber which was filled with equipment, machinery and engineering paraphernalia. There was a lathe, a metalworking forge, and a plan table on which lay several sets of blueprints. There was also a baffling array of gadgets and devices, placed on various workbenches.
Cauchemar bade us make ourselves at home while he removed his armour.
This he accomplished by installing himself within a convoluted cat’s cradle of steel joists and beams which neatly fitted around his armoured form, as though he were the final piece that completed a jigsaw. A huge clockwork mechanism groaned into life and began peeling off his black metal carapace bit by bit, using pincers mounted on pistons which operated in a complex sequence.
First the furnace-powered engine was lifted from his back. Then the sections of armour that covered his limbs were dismantled, each falling smartly apart into two pieces. Then off came the torso segment. Last to be removed was the helmet, and with it the rig which piped his voice to the armour’s exterior, somewhat in the manner of a gramophone speaker.
Watching this automated dissection was like watching a giant insect being broken down into its components by the hand of some dispassionate entomologist. One could only marvel at the rapidity and intricacy with which it was done. Whoever had designed the apparatus, and for that matter Cauchemar’s armour, was an engineer of singular skill and ingenuity, a genius to rival Telford or Brunel.
Had Holmes and I harboured the hope of seeing Cauchemar’s face, and thus establishing his true identity, it was to go unfulfilled. For beneath his helmet he wore a padded woollen “under-mask”, doubtless to cushion his head as the knights of yore did with their arming caps and helm bonnets. It covered his face entirely save for two holes for the eyes, which made it also reminiscent of the knitted balaclavas which British troops took to wearing in the Crimea to stave off the cold. The rest of him was encased in a similarly padded set of longjohns.
Without doffing this under-mask, Cauchemar spent some time damping down the armour’s portable furnace. Holmes availed himself of the opportunity to wander the chamber, inspecting the blueprints on the plan table and also the many barely explicable constructs around us. I accompanied him.
The devices turned out on closer examination to be items of weaponry, for the most part. Many were obviously still in the development phase, works in progress, incomplete. A stubby crossbow-like thing was primed with three brass balls connected to one another by thick wire – I took this to be a method of projecting, at speed, a bolas such as the ones used by South American gauchos to bring down errant cattle. Another similar weapon employed a spring-mounted torsion engine to launch a bundled-up steel-filament net, which presumably unfurled in midair to wrap itself around its target. A third weapon resembled nothing so much as a small multi-barrelled cannon, equipped with clamps that would permit it to be attached to Cauchemar’s forearm. In place of cannonballs, mortar shells or any similar kind of shot, there were hessian sacks filled with rock salt and sewn into a tight purse shape.
“The baron,” Holmes observed, “seeks to put his enemies out of commission but not to kill them. There is evidently a line he refuses to cross.”
“That is true,” said Cauchemar, having conducted his busines
s with the furnace. “And Dr Watson, I would be wary of touching that, if I were you.”
I had been about to lay hands on an intriguing contraption. It consisted of an elaborate arrangement of vacuum pump and pneumatic tubes, all connected to a glass tank filled with a glutinous white substance.
“It has something of a hair trigger,” Cauchemar continued, “and would cause a frightful mess if you got the contents all over yourself.” His voice, though now not distorted by the sound-conduction system his armour used, remained muffled by the under-mask. Even if Cauchemar had been a close friend of mine, I might not have recognised him purely from hearing him speak.
“Antipersonnel glue?” said Holmes inquisitively.
“Just so. A fast-acting, quick-drying paste, a formula of my own devising, which if jetted out in sufficient quantities covers its subject from head to toe and sets in an instant, rendering him immobile. I’m still experiencing a few teething problems with it, mainly related to speeding up the system of delivery. As yet, the paste works so efficiently, it tends to gum up the tubes before it can emerge, and the spray from the nozzle is as a result inconsistent and intermittent. But I am convinced I can get the thing to function properly in due course. As with any problem, it’s merely a question of time and the application of brainpower.”
“A fine sentiment, well put,” said Holmes. “You are a man after my own heart.”
Cauchemar greeted the accolade with an appreciative nod.
“We are,” he said to Holmes, “not so dissimilar, you and I, sir. We both rely on the strength of our minds, above all else, to combat crime. I lack your capacity for logical analysis and deductive reasoning, but what I have in its place is a knack for building things, especially things powered by compact motors using ultra-condensed steam.”
“You are also,” Holmes said, “of the middle classes, a scion of a modestly well-off family. I would put your age as early thirties, and your accent bespeaks a Home Counties upbringing, Sussex if I don’t miss my guess. You have a faint South Coast burr, modulated by education at a public school, one of the minor ones, because a top-tier public school would have thrashed every last trace of regional diction out of you. You came into a healthy-sized legacy in the not-too-distant past, not from your parents, because they were not of means, but from a rich relative, someone who was close kin but not that close. A childless uncle. That is how you have sponsored all this research and manufacture. Yes?”
Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Page 13