by Неизвестный
“Much better, thank you,” he replied, draining his glass of wine. Alcohol was not rationed on the Andrea Morgan, I noticed; beer and ale were served with lunch, and the captain drank wine with dinner.
“I believe tonight is to be the night,” Holmes said as we tucked into a beef and kidney pie. The ship’s cook did a credible beef and kidney pie, though the roast leg of mutton of the previous night was not up to Mrs Hudson’s standards.
“Now, this is what I’d like you to do,” Holmes continued, explaining the plan he had outlined to me earlier in the day.
“Very well,” the captain agreed, “but I hope this isn’t putting Dr Watson in any danger.”
“I shall be close by at all times,” Holmes replied. “And with any luck, we will get to the bottom of this business tonight.”
The captain’s mood was much lifted by this, and as the meal progressed and we all continued to partake of his excellent bottle of Bordeaux, he grew quite expansive. We spoke of many things — of philosophy and politics, of progress and profanity. As we talked, the ship’s cat made an appearance; sauntering into the room, it rubbed itself against the captain’s shins. It was an odd little creature, a dark, almost black tabby with a long, pointed nose and unusually large ears, so that its face rather resembled a bat.
“I hope you don’t mind my saying this,” I remarked, “but you seem unusually well educated for a professional sailor. What made you choose a life at sea, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Crane put down his wine glass and studied the crimson liquid inside it.
“Some men are born to life at sea, and some men are called to it, but she is a demanding and jealous mistress. Once caught in her net, few can return to the life they once knew. The sea changes everything; she becomes her own context, the alpha and omega of existence. You rise in the morning with the smell of salt water in your nostrils, and you fall off to bed hearing the sound of the waves in your dreams. That never changes; you can move hundreds of miles inland, but it never changes. Once she’s got you, you’re hers — and the sea knows that. Her power over men isn’t benign, but it demands respect. Respect her, and she just might let you live another day, a week, a month — even another year.”
As the captain talked, the cat jumped nimbly onto the table and began picking delicately at the food left on our plates. I looked at Crane, but he didn’t appear to notice, so I said nothing.
“You seem to have thought quite a lot about this,” Holmes remarked.
The captain shrugged and drained the last of his wine. “Maybe one has to love death a little bit to live this life; I’m not sure. All I know is that once you choose it, it’s hard to look at anything else, much as you might want to,” he continued, stroking the cat absently. The animal arched its back and walked stiff-legged in a little circle, purring loudly.
It occurred to me at that moment that Captain Crane and Holmes had more in common than I had realized at first; I had often thought my friend had a bit of a death wish, otherwise he would not have chosen so perilous a profession.
Later that night, before the first watch began, I went into the galley on the pretext of needing a glass of water; Holmes and I had agreed to meet there to finalize our plan. I found him waiting for me, standing in the corner by the tins of flour and tea.
“Are you quite ready?” he said, his voice sharp with anticipation.
“Yes, I think so. I am to take the captain’s bed, and he is to take mine.”
“Yes. You will pretend to be asleep, but remain awake. I hope that does not present too much of a problem for you.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry — there’s no fear of my falling asleep tonight!” Indeed, my nerves were so keyed up that even the Bordeaux I had consumed at dinner seemed to have little effect.
“And where will you be?”
“Close by — but not so close, I hope, that I scare off our prey.”
“Very well. I heard something today,” I continued, and proceeded to tell him about the argument I had overheard coming from the captain’s cabin.
“Hmm,” he replied, stroking his chin. “Of some interest, though not unexpected, I think. How odd,” he said, suddenly gazing at the tins lined up against the wall.
“What’s odd?” I inquired.
“These dead flies.”
“What’s so odd about dead flies?”
“Not so much the fact that they are dead, but that they are all in the same place. I wonder…” he said, beginning to examine the row of tins on the shelf.
But at that moment we heard footsteps, and turned around to see the first mate enter the room.
“All set for your watch, fellows?” he said, with a sharp glance at Holmes, who nodded.
“Certainly.”
“You’d best not get into Cookie’s things,” the mate warned, smiling. “He is a holy terror when anyone messes with his galley.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Holmes replied. “We were just getting a glass of water.”
“All right, then, off you go,” the mate answered, studying my friend, but Holmes’ face was a mask of innocence as we left the room.
I headed toward my quarters, then doubled back on my steps, making sure that no one saw me as I headed for the captain’s cabin. The door was ajar, and I slipped into the room unnoticed. As I changed into my nightshirt, I noticed a cup of tea by the bedside. It was quite hot, so I presumed the cook had brought it up to the captain; perhaps it was his custom to drink tea before retiring. As it was a raw night, I drank it down gratefully. It had an odd, musky aroma, but it was hot and sweet and I finished it greedily. I supposed it to be some unfamiliar kind of Chinese tea that the captain had become fond of during his voyages; I preferred a good straight orange pekoe myself, but it was welcome nonetheless on such a cold night.
I climbed into bed, put out the light, and settled down to wait for the appearance of my nocturnal visitor.
In spite of my earlier wakefulness, I was gradually overcome by the pull of a drowsiness unlike any other I had ever known. I was dragged down into disturbing and lurid dreams, in which I was swimming through dark and hazy depths, pursued by horrible sea creatures, their faces alit with malice, their eyes shining red as demons. I heard the ship’s clock striking one as I was brought into sudden consciousness — or rather, a form of consciousness. When I opened my eyes I could see the room in the moonlight, which shone a ghostly pale blue through the window — but it was not the room I remembered seeing when I went to bed.
The walls appeared to shift and move before my eyes, as though they were made of some liquid substance, and the shapes of the objects in the room were some twisted version of what I remembered: the clock on the wall seemed to be grinning at me, its white face an evil, malicious mask, the numbers dancing and winking at me. Then, as I watched, the face transformed itself into the form of the sea serpent tattoo on the first mate’s arm. The beast twisted and writhed, and opened its cavernous maw, its teeth white and gleaming in the moonlight. It stretched its evil head toward me, its hideous mouth gaping wide as if to devour me. I shrank back in the bed, paralyzed with fear.
My head felt thick and fuzzy, as though it were full of cobwebs, and I could not manage to think clearly. I tried to convince myself that the things I was seeing were impossible, but just then I felt the bedclothes themselves moving of their own volition; I was certain they were going to wrap around my neck and strangle me. I opened my mouth to scream, but just then I heard a whooshing sound and a form appeared at the far end of the room. I squinted to see it more clearly, for it was wavery and luminous. There was no question that it was the figure of a woman, dressed all in white, with long black curls. The apparition lifted an arm toward me, pointing at me with her long, slender hand, and this time I did scream. I was utterly convinced that it was the captain’s dead wife, and that she had returned from
the grave to avenge her killer.
In my confused state, I believed she thought me responsible for her death, and was there to take her revenge upon me. Though I tried to remain silent, the screams welled up in my throat and forced themselves out of me, as though I had no will of my own. The ghostly figured hesitated, then started towards me, at which point I screamed even louder.
I am not entirely certain what happened next, as my confusion was only deepened by the action around me; the cobwebs inside my head seemed to grow denser and thicker, clouding out any chance of clear thinking. But I was aware of Holmes appearing suddenly in the room, from behind the apparition, and of the sound of voices … there was shouting, and the sound of a scuffle, and then a gunshot.
The sound of gunfire brought me more to my senses, though when I tried to move I felt as though I was underwater. I jumped out of bed as quickly as I could, and stumbled to the corner of the room where I had seen the ‘ghost,’ only to find Holmes lying on the floor against the wall.
“Holmes!” I cried, as Captain Crane entered the room breathlessly. I felt as if everything were happening in slow motion, in another room, and that I was merely observing the events as they occurred before me.
“He got away,” Crane said. “Jumped overboard. I saw him swimming towards a skiff … he may have made it; he’s a strong swimmer. Are you all right?” he said, seeing that Holmes was lying on the floor.
“Yes,” Holmes replied, getting to his feet. “It’s just a scratch. Where is Andrew?”
“Right here,” came the boy’s voice from behind the captain.
I looked up, and to my surprise, saw not the boy, but the lady in white, minus her long dark curls. It took my muddled brain a moment to make the connection, but then I realized what had transpired: the apparition of the captain’s late wife had in fact been his son — with a wig and makeup, the boy’s resemblance to his dead mother was uncanny. His clothes glowed with a peculiar greenish hue, which I recognized as phosphorus. I could see that his eyes had been lined with kohl, and there was rouge upon his cheeks.
The captain evidently had the same question as I did, because he turned to his son.
“Why, Andrew?”
The boy hung his head. “He told me it was your fault she died — that you had poisoned her. He told me that if you saw her ghost you would confess — that you would repent what you had done.”
Crane shook his head sadly. “How could you think that of me, Andrew? How could you?”
“I’m sorry,” the boy answered softly. “I just — after a while, I just didn’t know what to think.”
I suddenly realized the significance of the argument I had overheard earlier that day. “Snead?” I asked Holmes, who nodded. My voice sounded odd, as though I were in an echo chamber.
“He poisoned the boy’s mind just as surely as he poisoned Mrs Crane.”
“Let me look at that, will you?” I said, noticing that Holmes was clutching his shoulder.
“Really, it’s nothing, Watson.”
I was glad of his response, as my vision was still blurry. I blinked my eyes in an attempt to focus.
“What is it, Watson?” Holmes said. “Are you all right?”
I smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I may be a bit the worse for wear myself tomorrow.” I gestured toward the empty tea cup next to the bed. My head was still swimming, but the hallucinations had ceased, and the shapes around me were returning to normal. “I’m afraid my tea was tampered with.”
“Of course!” Holmes cried. “I suspected as much, but I didn’t know about the bedtime cup of tea.”
“I should have told you,” Crane said. “It’s been my custom for so many years to drink a cup of herbal tea before retiring that I quite forgot to mention it.”
Holmes picked up the cup and sniffed it. “That explains the dead flies in the kitchen.”
“Dead flies?” Captain Crane said.
“Amanita muscaria,” Holmes replied. “It’s a mushroom, a member of the deadly amanita family, otherwise known as fly agaric. Very effective at killing flies — and highly hallucinogenic to humans.”
“So that’s how he did it!” Crane exclaimed, seizing the tea cup from Holmes.
“Yes,” Holmes agreed. “Amanita muscaria produces a confused, hallucinogenic state in the victim. It also can inhibit movement and coherency, so that you were unable to pursue your ‘ghostly visitor’ while under the influence of the drug.” He moved to the closet on the far side of the room and pulled aside the sliding door, which moved noiselessly in its grooves. “Yes,” he said, examining it, “this has been recently oiled, so that it will slide back and forth without a sound. A very similar technique was used at the séance we attended in London,” he said to me. “I detected the presence of a secret panel in that room that connected with another part of the house, so that the ‘apparition’ could slip into the room almost soundlessly. Of course,” he added, “our London medium did not have the advantage of a drugged audience.” He turned to Andrew Crane. “Did you wait in here until your father was asleep?” he said in a severe tone.
The boy nodded, his face a picture of guilt and misery. He still held the wig in his hands. Having never seen her alive, I did not realize how keen the resemblance was between him and his dead mother, but apparently it was strong enough to fool his grieving, drug-afflicted father.
“I don’t know what to say. I am so very sorry for my part in this,” the boy said forlornly.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” his father replied sternly, but I could hear the relief in his voice. “Poor Dr Watson,” he said, turning to me. “You’d best get to bed — you will undoubtedly have a most unpleasant time of it tomorrow, if your headaches are anything like mine.”
The captain’s prediction was unfortunately all too true; I awoke the next morning with a thudding headache. At breakfast, I sipped my coffee but could not bear the thought of food.
Captain Crane looked at me sympathetically. “You don’t look terribly good, Dr Watson, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I know now what your headaches have been like.”
The captain smiled ruefully. “Yes, I’m sorry about that.”
Holmes shook his head. “No, it is I who should apologize. I should have examined your routine more closely; if I had, I would have figured out that on nights when you were to be ‘visited’ by your late wife’s ‘ghost,’ your tea would be laced with hallucinogens. I was examining the tins in the galley when I was interrupted by the appearance of your first mate. He kept a close eye on me from then on, and it was difficult to shake him.”
The captain shook his head. “I just can’t understand why Snead would want to destroy me. I wasn’t a bad employer, and we seemed to get on well.”
“He was just an agent of someone more malicious and powerful than you can imagine, Captain. It was unfortunate for you that you found yourself between this man and something he wanted.”
“What was that?”
“Your ship, and all that went with it — your shipping route, and mostly importantly, the valuable cargo you carried. He is an old and entrenched enemy of mine, and this is not the first time we have locked swords.”
“Really? Who is this person?”
“His name is Professor James Moriarty, and I believe him to be behind this entire business.”
The captain stared at Holmes. “You amaze me, Mr Holmes.”
“I also regret to tell you that, as I suspected earlier, I now believe your wife was poisoned.”
“But why? What did she ever do to deserve that?”
“The answer to that is quite simple,” Holmes replied. “The poison was not meant for her.”
The captain’s face went rigid with shock. “Not meant for her? For who, then?”
“It was meant
for you.”
“Me?”
“Moriarty was intent on gaining control of your ship and its valuable route to the Orient. You were obviously an impediment to that plan. It was simple enough to get your first mate to lace your stew with poison — and, as Moriarty includes a working knowledge of mycology in his bag of many tricks, I suspect he gave Snead an extract of a more deadly amanita than the fly agaric — perhaps the Destroying Angel, or the Death Cap. Either one would mimic symptoms of severe food poisoning, and lead eventually to death. Probably he intended for Snead to poison you and your entire family. But he could not anticipate that you and your son would have an argument that night, and that your son would then leave before dinner — or that your dog would manage to get out and suddenly take off after a rabbit, or a squirrel, or whatever it was he was chasing … it is the unanticipated elements that can put a crimp in even the most well thought out plan.
“In any event, that dog saved your life, though your wife was not so lucky. Seeing the effect that her death had upon you, however, Moriarty may have thought that you would succumb to your grief and give up your ship, as it were, allowing him to place one of his henchmen at the helm. But when your son stepped in and took up the reins, Moriarty was forced to try another tack.”
“Hence the ‘hauntings.’”
“Precisely. You were already close to the breaking point; if he could get you to snap entirely, he could wrest control of your ship. Another poisoning would look too suspicious; likewise, a violent death might draw too much attention. Your grief provided him with an idea; once Snead was able to enlist the help of your son to create the appearance of the ‘ghost,’ he figured it was a matter of time before you succumbed to the strain of your wife’s death and went entirely…”
“Mad. He was trying to drive me mad.”
“Yes.”
Crane shook his head. “You say you have previous experience of this … this fiend. How can it be you are still alive?”