“There we have it,” Holmes announced in English, rubbing his hands together. “The last leg of our journey. Let us set sail immediately.”
“Immediately?” Mortimer echoed, sounding wretchedly weary. It seemed he really had had enough of this expedition.
“Of course, Doctor. There’s no time like the present.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
THE GARCIA MANSION
In the moonlit dark, the steamboat forged along the winding, silvery contours of the Banano. Suarez and Ramon, whose surname was Perez, took turns at the helm. When not piloting, each would stand lookout at the bow. A log bobbing along in the water might hole the hull, or there might be ripples indicating the presence of rocks just below the surface. By day, such hazards were readily detectable to an experienced pilot; at night, less so.
The stars faded and dawn broke. A thin mist hovered above the river. This was the only hour at which the forest was anything like quiet. There was a pause in the ruckus, like an in-drawing of breath before the exhalation of a new day.
Shortly before noon we encountered a band of indios, standing at the river’s edge. At first there were only two of them, then half a dozen, then a dozen. They manifested from the forest shadows like wraiths. They were small and wiry, and were clad in grass skirts, feathered headdresses and extraordinarily large, saucer-shaped nose rings. Paint adorned their coppery skin in ceremonial patterns – stripes on their faces, dots and whorls on their chests – and their jet-black hair was uniformly worn in a pageboy cut. Each carried a wooden hunting spear with a tip of sharpened bone.
They eyed us as we went by. There was something inordinately solemn in their gaze and I wondered how we must seem to them, we emissaries from another world, a world of steam power and elaborate, all-covering clothing. People like us had entered their land unbidden and taken it over, bringing guns and diseases and a lust for material acquisition. Did they hate us? Were we enigmas to them? Did they feel anything about us at all?
As the steamboat passed by, one by one, imperturbably, the indios turned and melted back into the forest. I expected at least one of them might turn round and look at us again, but none did. We, it seemed, did not merit a backward glance.
With the sun past its zenith, Suarez announced that we would be reaching the Garcia mansion in less than an hour. He drew our attention, too, to the clouds that were gathering to the north. They were iron grey, forbidding and mountainously tall.
“A bad storm, señores,” said he. “There will be rain – rain like you have never known.”
“Rain can be useful,” said Holmes. “It can cover our approach to the house, for one thing.”
“We’re going to sneak up on it?” said Grier. “Is that the plan?”
“Why not just walk up to the front door and demand that Beryl give us Harry?” said Sir Henry. “We are five, and she is just one. She will have no alternative but to do as we say.”
“This is a woman who will stop at nothing,” said Holmes. “She has twice committed premeditated murder. She unleashed a potentially deadly insect on a hapless victim. She stole a child. She is not to be underestimated. If she feels cornered, she might resort to some desperate act whose consequences would be most regrettable.”
“She might hurt Harry, is that what you’re saying?”
“That is what I am trying not to say. We also have no idea if she is alone in the mansion. She may have servants there, such as Antonio, who could have journeyed from England ahead of her to prepare the house for her arrival. She may also have a band of local thugs hired to protect her. She may have a rifle and no qualms about shooting at us from a window. Given all these considerations, to ‘just walk up to the front door’ is the least wise tactic open to us. Stealth, on the other hand, is our friend.”
Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. At the sound, the noise of the forest creatures became muted. They knew what was coming. Now was the time to huddle down and take shelter.
A cool wind swept in from the north, shivering through the forest canopy. The drop in temperature would have been welcome, had one not known what it presaged. The thunderclouds continued to grow, swelling like some titanic fungus. Lightning chased back and forth within their depths.
The sunlight dimmed. Then the rain started.
It was, as Suarez had said, rain like one had never known. It was rain of Biblical proportions. It was rain to make the fiercest downpour of an English autumn seem like a mere spring shower. It hammered onto the trees, making boughs droop and leaves drop. It pounded onto the river, turning its surface to a seething shimmer. It fell in vertical streams, as though from some mighty cataract.
Suarez and Ramón remained topside, sheltering together in the wheelhouse. Ramón had boarded up the shattered side window, so that they were able to keep dry, more or less. The rest of us went below decks, hurrying down the narrow companionway and filing through a hatch into the steamboat’s single cramped cabin. The rain drummed on the caulked planks above us like a thousand stamping feet.
“This is preposterous,” said Mortimer. “We will catch our death if we go out in such weather.”
“When we get to the house, you are welcome to stay on the boat, Mortimer,” said Holmes. “You do not have the experience in this kind of venture that Watson and I have, or indeed that Sir Henry and Corporal Grier have. You are, for want of a better word, a civilian. No one would think any the less of you were you to sit this one out. In fact, I recommend it. We can manage perfectly well without you.”
Mortimer remonstrated, but I could tell he was relieved. He lacked the physicality of the rest of us. As a rural physician, he had little need of it. He might prove a liability rather than an asset.
Presently, we heard the engine die down. This was the signal to go back up on deck. The plan was that Suarez and Ramón would leave us on the riverbank just around the corner from the mansion and would remain there with the steamboat, out of sight, while we made our approach on foot.
Outside, we were soaked to the skin within seconds. The rain was warm, but that was small consolation. There was no convenient landing place on the bank, so we had to clamber over the side of the boat and lower ourselves into the water. Submerged up to the thighs, we waded ashore. Then, dripping and squelching, the four of us strode through the forest, with Grier once again wielding Suarez’s machete to hack out a path.
Even among the trees there was no relief from the rain. The foliage funnelled it down onto us like some sort of natural sluice mechanism. Meanwhile, lightning flickered overhead like snakes’ tongues and thunder crackled.
We had some notion where the Garcia estate lay, and within half an hour we caught a glimpse of something large and off-white ahead of us. This proved to be a two-storey colonial mansion with a verandah running all the way around the lower floor and louvred shutters on the windows. It sat on a hillside, its front elevation supported by posts whose bases were driven into the earth.
The house might have been impressive once, even imposing, but time and neglect had left it in a sorry state. The apex of the roof sagged and many of the slates were missing. The paintwork was peeling and discoloured. Vines wreathed their tendrils over its walls. Several of the window shutters dangled off a single hinge, and a couple were missing completely.
The land surrounding this dilapidated edifice had likewise seen better days. Everything was shaggily overgrown. What man had carved out as his own, the forest had begun to reclaim. Still in evidence, however, were the remnants of an ornamental pond, thick with green slime, and a few flowerbeds and trellises. There was also, just visible, a series of steps cut into the earth and shored up with wooden risers. These led down to a jetty that jutted out perpendicular into the river, slumped drunkenly on its pilings.
Holmes commanded us to keep still and stay out of sight, and for a time we crouched, observing the mansion through the rain’s rippling, gauzy screen.
Eventually I said, “There seems to be nobody home.” What with the hissing ra
in and the intermittent peals of thunder, I felt under no compunction to lower my voice.
“No. See there.” Holmes pointed to one of the downstairs windows. “Twice I have spied a figure moving within.”
“Are you sure? This wretched rain – it’s hard to make out anything clearly.”
“I am sure. I propose we split our party in half. Watson and I will approach the house from this side. Sir Henry and Grier will approach it from the other.”
“A two-pronged assault,” said Grier. “Good idea. That way, if one lot of us are seen, the other lot may not be.”
“You have twenty minutes to circumvent the house, keeping to the trees. When you are at the far side and ready to proceed, give some sort of signal.”
“I can do birdcalls. My impersonation of a whippoorwill is, I have been told, uncanny.”
“How does it sound? Do it so that we can know, but softly.”
Grier sheathed the machete in his belt, cupped his hands and hooted through them. The call sounded very much like the word “whippoorwill”. “When I deliver it at full volume,” he said, “you will be able to hear it clearly above the rain.”
“Good,” said Holmes. “A whippoorwill it is. Each pair of us will move in simultaneously. You and Sir Henry, Grier, take the verandah and try the front door. Watson and I will look for a rear entrance. Agreed?”
There were nods all round. Then Sir Henry and Grier crept off through the undergrowth.
“Now to see how this all plays out,” said Holmes.
“Yesterday,” I said, “when you spoke of a snake in our midst… I have been racking my brains, but I am still unsure to whom you were referring. I am wondering whether it is Sir Henry, and that is the reason why you have sent him off with Grier. You mistrust him and would rather he were not present when we have our confrontation with Mrs Stapleton.”
“You and I are to go in early, then, Watson? Is that my plan? The two of us alone, without reinforcements?”
“Yes. Better that than have a traitor with us, ready to stab us in the back.”
“There are few people in this world in whom I have implicit faith. You, it goes without saying, are one of them. Another is Sir Henry Baskerville.”
“Really?” I said. “But Sir Henry attacked Grier with the hook block.”
“Did he?”
“Did he not? You said as much.”
“I said it was plausible. I did not go so far as to declare it a fact.”
“So having Mortimer and me keep watch over Sir Henry – there was no real justification for it?”
“A feint, so that the enemy would think I had fallen for his trick.”
“You could have told me that, Holmes,” I said somewhat hotly. “If nothing else, all this time I have been thinking ill of Sir Henry, without good cause. Might you not have taken me into your confidence?”
“For the feint to work, it had to be convincing,” said Holmes, “and for that to happen, you could not be a party to it. You are accomplished in many fields but dissimulation is not one of them.”
I nodded, acknowledging the truth of this. Unlike Holmes with his natural bent for theatrics and disguises, I struggled with subterfuge and was apt to give the game away through some careless word or action. Thus he was at pains to leave me ignorant of his more intricate stratagems until they were revealed.
“Well then,” I said, “by a process of elimination, the enemy must be Grier.”
“What leads you to that conclusion? Did Grier not, after all, come to see me at Baker Street in order to engage my services right at the very start of this affair?”
“Yes, but think about it. Grier may have feared that Sir Henry would come to his senses and seek your aid. By doing so himself before Sir Henry could, he could give the impression of innocence. Moreover, having gained your confidence, he would then be able to monitor the investigation at first hand and perhaps even subtly misdirect you along the way.”
“A bluff, in other words?” said Holmes. “If so, a spectacularly bold one.”
“No less boldly, Grier inflicted that injury on himself with the hook block and planted the cufflink to cast the blame on Sir Henry.”
“And the reason for this drastic measure?”
“He had some idea that you were on to him, and sought to mislead you.”
“I am not certain I would be willing to put myself to that much trouble and discomfort just to allay suspicion. No, Watson, Grier is as pure as the driven snow. I trust him as much as I do you and Sir Henry. Our ‘snake’ is someone else.”
I scratched my head. “I am very confused right now.”
“Some might say that was the natural state of Dr John Watson.”
“Too harsh.”
“You are right. I apologise, old friend.”
“Could the villain be Suarez?” I offered.
“Suarez? That affable old worthy?”
“He has hardly been exerting himself to help us fulfil our quest. I am convinced his launch can go faster than he has allowed it to, and if anyone would know how best to sabotage it, it is he.”
“And he was even willing to sacrifice the boat altogether?” said Holmes.
“Why not? It might have gained him a few days’ extra pay.”
“Another drastic measure. You seem to think that there is nothing people will not resort to in the name of distracting or swindling others. For the record, the various acts of sabotage carried out on Suarez’s launch could not have been by his own hand. They were simply too inept for that. Recall how Suarez repaired the engine when it faltered; how little time it took him. Whatever the mechanical fault was, it can hardly have been serious since it offered him so little challenge. The true saboteur, not being au fait with engines, made a very poor fist of it.”
He paused while a rumble of thunder rose to a crescendo and dwindled.
“As for the leak,” he went on, “I took the opportunity to examine the damage over Suarez’s shoulder as he was mending it. From the looks of it, a screwdriver or chisel or similar implement was used, something from the launch’s toolbox. It was done hastily and clumsily. Suarez would surely have been subtler. Then there is the matter of the footprints beside the tree to which he had tied the launch’s painter. I identified two separate sets. One was Suarez’s, from when he tied the painter to it. He is not a tall man and takes, by my estimation, a rather dainty size seven shoe. The other set were left by someone with larger feet, and can only have belonged to whoever untied the painter.”
“So if it is not Sir Henry, and not Grier, and not Suarez, then that leaves…”
“Shh!” Holmes held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”
Dimly through the rattle of the rain I discerned the rhythmic throb of an engine. Moments later, the steamboat appeared from around the bend in the river. It was cruising slowly towards the jetty.
On deck I saw two figures, one behind the other. The one in front was Suarez. The one behind, Mortimer. Mortimer was holding something to the Costa Rican’s throat – a slim, silvery object. Ramón was in the wheelhouse, steering, looking anxious.
“Beryl!” Mortimer called out as he caught sight of the mansion. “Beryl! It’s me. James. Are you there? They are coming for you, Beryl. Be on your guard. Holmes, Watson, the others… They are here.”
“There is our Judas, Watson,” said Holmes with grim satisfaction. “There is Beryl Stapleton’s aider and abettor and someone who has been a thorn in our side since this whole affair began. I give you Dr James Mortimer, showing his true colours at long last.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
DUAL HOSTAGES
“But… But…”
I was lost for words.
“But Mortimer is our friend?” said Holmes. “He may have been during our investigation into the hound. Five years on, he is our friend no longer. He has thrown in his lot with Mrs Stapleton.”
“But why?” “The reason is, I suspect, the reason any man would commit heinous deeds on behalf of a woman. The oldest reason
in the book. Love.”
“Beryl!” Mortimer yelled once more, as Ramón reduced speed and guided the steamboat carefully in alongside the jetty. “Can you hear me?”
There was definite ardour in his voice. He seemed almost euphoric, indeed. I was fairly sure that the object he was holding at Suarez’s throat in a white-knuckled grasp was a surgical scalpel.
Holmes stood erect and stepped out from the forest into Mortimer’s eyeline.
“Mortimer.” The word, though delivered in a loud, authoritative voice, was drowned by thunder, and he was obliged to repeat it. “That’s enough. Let Suarez go. He is innocent in all of this.”
“I need him as my hostage, Holmes,” came the reply. “Without him, I would not have been able to convince Ramón to bring us to the house. Ramón would not have been nearly so compliant if he did not think that I was prepared to slit open Suarez’s jugular vein. Is that not right, Ramón?”
The steamboat pilot nodded guiltily.
“Take me instead,” Holmes said. “I offer myself as a substitute.”
“Oh no, Holmes. That would not do at all. Suarez won’t think me rude, I am sure, when I say that he poses little threat to me. Whereas you, sir, are a dangerous man. You can fight. You have keen wits. You would find some way of turning the tables.”
“And if I were to promise to offer no resistance?”
“I would not believe you.”
Holmes canted his head to one side. “You see through me. But what is your next move, Doctor? We are in mate, but do you have an endgame?”
“He may not,” said a feminine voice from the verandah, “but I do.”
It was Beryl Stapleton. She had emerged from the house, barefoot and wearing a white cotton dress with voluminous skirts. I was struck again by her beauty, but also by a wild, imperious look in her eyes that I did not remember from before. She was still breathtakingly lovely. Yet there was a difference about her, a coldness, a haughtiness, which seemed somehow epitomised by the streaks of silver that now shot through her lustrous black hair. She appeared to have aged far more than five years. Here was a woman, I thought, who had undergone suffering, a woman who had been sorely tested and was now crueller, harder, for it.
Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons Page 23