Shadows over Baker Street

The Mystery of the Hanged Man’s Puzzle (1897) PAUL FINCH

Neither Holmes nor Watson had really wanted to attend.

Watson went as far as to say he didn’t think they should. And he had good reason for that. One might argue that they were honor-bound to attend, that it was in some ways incumbent on them—after all, this was the net result of much of the work they had done together—but in the particular case of Harold Jobson, the blame rested entirely with the Metropolitan police; neither the good doctor nor his friend had been at any stage involved. Despite this, a letter from the aforementioned gentleman had arrived at 221B Baker Street on a bright May morning in 1897, in the form of a personal invitation. Even then, Holmes might not have been tempted. But there was something about the Jobson case . . . something odd and inexplicable. And then there was the letter itself, and its curious, rather ominous wording. And at the end of the day, Newgate was only a quarter of an hour’s carriage ride away.

Jobson smiled across the table at them. He had broad, strong features and a chalky-white complexion, which under his mop of jet-black hair, looked almost ghostly. “I knew you’d come,” he said quietly.

“Then you’re quite the prophet,” Holmes replied.

Jobson shook his head. “It’s just that I read people well. I knew the great Sherlock Holmes would never be able to resist a matter of national, even international, importance.”

“You made that case well in your letter. Can you enlighten us further?”

“I can, but I won’t. Instead, I have something for you.” Jobson fished a folded scrap of paper from his trouser pocket, opened it, then turned and sought the warders’ permission. Both officers examined the item closely before exchanging bewildered shrugs and passing it over the table.

At first glance, Holmes, too, was unable to make head or tail of it. It was a crude, pencil-drawn grid pattern, consisting of ruled lines; most were connected, forming a vague network, though there was no symmetry or identifiable configuration; most of the lines finally tapered down and merged at the right-hand side. Lying roughly in the center, though perhaps slightly to the left, at a point otherwise unreferenced, there was a small circle in red ink.

“What is this?” Watson finally asked.

“That’s for Mr. Holmes to fathom out,” their host replied. “In giving it to you, Holmes, I’m giving the world a chance. Of course, I owe the world precious little . . . so it’s only a slim chance. By my approximation, you have, at the most, two or three days to solve the puzzle.”

“And if I fail?” Holmes wondered.

Jobson leaned forward over the table, his smile becoming a ghastly sickle-shaped grin. “If you fail . . . there’ll be a calamity the like of which you have never imagined. I, of course, won’t be here to see it. But in that respect, I’ll be among the lucky ones.”

“I’d have thought someone in your position would be seeking to make peace with his fellowmen, not leave them a legacy of hatred,” said Watson.

“It isn’t my legacy, Dr. Watson,” the felon replied. “Don’t be lulled into the cozy misapprehension that in destroying me, the state is destroying its prime foe.” He glanced up at the clock on the gray brick wall. It read five minutes to nine. “Quite the opposite, in fact. In roughly five minutes’ time, your troubles will only just be starting.”

A moment later, Holmes and Watson were out in the passage. With a loud clang, the cell closed behind them. Twenty yards to their left, the door stood open to a brightly lit, whitewashed chamber, in the middle of which a slender gentleman in funereal black was putting the last delicate touches to a noose.

“Well, Holmes . . . did he have anything to say?” came a gruff voice.

It was Lestrade. The inspector had arrived in company with two of the other detectives who’d worked on the Jobson case, but it was still a surprise to see him. The Scotland Yard man was currently, and rather notoriously, involved in the hunt for a large male crocodile that had gone missing from the zoological garden at Regent’s Park . . . an investigation which had already been the object of several humorous cartoons in Punch. It represented a considerable change of pace from his previous and more earnest hunt for Harold Jobson, the vicious murderer of five people.

Holmes shook his head. “For once, Lestrade, both you and I are at an equal loss.”

“Some vague ramblings,” Watson added. “Didn’t make a lot of sense.”

The policeman harumphed, then adjusted his collar. In honor of the day, he was wearing one of his higher, stiffer ones. “I daresay the fellow is insane . . . but it was a despicable crime. He’s going to the only fate he deserves.”

“No doubt,” Holmes said, turning on his heel and striding away. “No doubt at all.”

And that was true. Harold Jobson’s crime had been quite despicable.

In the dead of night, in an apparent drugged stupor—nobody could conceive that he’d gone about his heinous act while of sound mind—he’d broken into the Russell Square home of the wealthy chemist and professor Archibald Langley, intending to burglarize the property. At some point during the course of the crime, he came across two of the maids while they slept in their ground-floor room, and brutally bludgeoned them to death with his crowbar. He then went upstairs, where he attacked Professor Langley’s butler, Henry, who had risen from his bed, thinking he’d heard a noise. The loyal Henry was also slain, his skull battered to a pulp. Still not sated, Jobson made his way into the bedroom of the chemist’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Laura, hauled her from under her blankets, and bound her to a chair with a bellpull cord. He then went next door into Professor Langley’s bedchamber and did the same to him. What happened after this was uncertain. Very possibly, Jobson tortured the poor souls, seeking to learn the whereabouts of valuables in the house. Whether or not he did this, he left an hour later empty-handed . . . but only after he’d deliberately started a fire in the sitting room, which very quickly swept through the rest of the building, entirely gutting it, and burning the still-bound captives beyond recognition as human beings. It was to be hoped that Professor Langley and his daughter had been killed first; the evidence, however, suggested otherwise.

As they rode back to Baker Street, Holmes mulled over the dark details of the crime. Even now, with the knowledge of the full confession obtained by the police, it made little sense.

“Why should a fellow,” he said, “in the process of committing a crime for which he can expect at most several years’ penal servitude, for no obvious reason then go on and make it far, far worse . . . both for his victims and himself?”

Watson shrugged. “Why try to understand the irrational? It can’t be done.”

“I’m afraid I disagree.” For a moment, Holmes was lost in thought. “Often the most irrational acts seem rational to the perpetrator. Yet in this case, though we know a little about Jobson’s background—he came from a good family, for example, but regarded himself as a failure, and in later life took to drugs and drink—we’ve learned remarkably little about his true motives.”

“Well, it’s typical of Lestrade not to have done a more thorough job, I suppose.”

Again, Holmes shook his head. “On the contrary. On this occasion, I think the inspector performed his office excellently. The felon was arrested within a day of committing his atrocity, and a watertight prosecution case was presented.”

“Yes, but as you said . . .”

“Ah!” Holmes half smiled. “I don’t think Freudian psychoanalysis is really Scotland Yard’s field just at the moment, Watson . . . though maybe we should make it ours. What do you make of the rumors that Jobson belonged to some kind of cult or sect?”

“I honestly wouldn’t know.”

Holmes pondered. “The mentality of the cultist is often the hardest to understand. Still”—and he took out his watch and saw that it read two minutes past nine—“that’s one cultist we needn’t worry about any longer.”

Holmes spent much of the rest of that day engrossed in the puzzle. When he wasn’t taking measurements of its lines and making odd calculations, he was at the lab table setting up chemical tests on the paper and the ink. No conclusion of value was drawn.

“Isn’t it possible that Jobson was simply trying to inconvenience you?” Watson wondered. “Setting you a meaningless and insoluble problem in order to frustrate you?”

Holmes considered as he gazed down on Baker Street and puffed on his pipe. “But why should he? I never had any contact with the man.”

“This forthcoming calamity he spoke about. Perhaps he was just trying to cause a panic . . . his last revenge against society, so to speak?”

Again Holmes thought about this, but shook his head. “In which case he should have gone to the newspapers. Of all people, he must have known that I was the least likely to spread it around.”

“Well, it confounds me,” Watson admitted, getting back to the Times.

“And me.” Holmes lifted the slip of paper from his desk, looked it over one last time, then folded it and slid it into his jacket pocket. “Perhaps we should approach this from a different angle. Come, we’re off to Southwark.”

“Southwark?”

“Jobson lived on Pickle Herring Street. I saw it in the trial transcripts. It wasn’t an address I was likely to forget.”

Pickle Herring Street ran alongside that bustling reach of the Thames known as the Pool of London. It was hemmed in on its north side by a dense forest of sails, masts, and rigging, which extended all the way from Cotton’s Wharf to the immense new construction that was Tower Bridge. Little of the grandeur of that marvel of engineering filtered down into the shadowy recesses below it, however. At this point, Pickle Herring Street, which stank somewhat appropriately of whelks, shrimps, and strongly salted fish, gave out to a series of narrow, straw-matted passages, winding off into a gloomy warren of ale shops and dingy lodging houses.

In one of these alleyways, a squalid, rat-infested place, Holmes and Watson found the former habitation of Harold Jobson. It was little more than a lean-to shelter, its broken windows patched up with rags, its single inner room now open to the elements, the door having been torn from its hinges, and anything of value within long ago pillaged.

“I don’t understand,” said Watson as they stared into the dank interior. “Jobson was educated. He boasted of his comfortable family background. How did he descend to this?”

Holmes pursed his lips. “Who can say? The pressure of living sometimes becomes too much for a man . . . he simply drops out of society. Then there is the cult factor. I’ve heard of such things before. Acolytes are so mesmerized by their new calling that they surrender everything they have. Either way, Watson, I doubt there’s anything of use to us here.”

They made their way back by what seemed to Watson a circuitous route, Holmes taking each left-hand turn as they came to it. A few moments later, perhaps inevitably, they were covering ground they’d already covered before.

“You realize we’ve just come ’round in a wide circle?” Watson ventured.

“I do,” Holmes replied quietly. “Do you think the fellow behind us does?”

“Behind us . . .”

“I’d rather you didn’t look ’round.”

They continued to stroll, but Watson was puzzled. These riverside cut-throughs were thronging with laborers of every sort; riggers, ballast heavers, coal whippers, lightermen, all hurrying back and forth. How his friend had managed to pick one out as a potential foe was beyond him.

“The one with the loose nail in his shoe,” Holmes added by way of explanation. “It keeps clicking on the cobbles, and it has been doing so for some time.”

Watson concentrated, and now indeed he did hear a faint and regular clicking amid the clatter and din of the docks. “Surely he wouldn’t have come in a circle, too, unless he was following us?”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Holmes, rounding a corner and abruptly stepping into a narrow ginnel, dragging Watson with him.

A moment later, they’d moved through it into a derelict hovel, where they waited. Seconds passed, then there was a hurried pattering of feet as someone came urgently into the ginnel behind them. Clearly, the stalker was anxious for his prey not to elude him. The feet went on past the entrance to the hovel, the loose nail clicking all the way, then halted and backtracked. The owner of the feet, a burly, brutish-looking fellow in a shabby three-piece suit, with a dirty bowler hat pulled down on his broad, fat head, came warily in. He froze when he felt the muzzle of Watson’s revolver against his lower back.

“That’s far enough, sir,” said the doctor.

The man made a sharp move toward his jacket pocket, but Holmes stepped smartly up to him. “Keep your hands where we can see them, if you please.”

“What is this?” the man asked, his accent pure Bow. “You trying to rob me or something?”

“We might ask you the same question,” said Watson.

“Then again we might not,” Holmes added. “I doubt a common thief would be so careless as to follow his intended prey for several minutes along public thoroughfares when he has all these alleys and doorways to skulk in. So tell us, who are you?”

The fellow grinned, showing yellow, feral teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Holmes eyed him, recognizing the stubborn surliness of the foot soldier rather than the officer in command. “What’s your connection with Harold Jobson?” he asked.

At this, there was a sudden nervous look about the fellow. “Jobson?” he said. “Dunno him. Never ’eard of him.”

“If you’ve never heard of him, why are you trembling?”

“I never ’eard of him, I tell ya!” the fellow suddenly bellowed, driving one hamlike elbow backward, catching Watson hard in the midriff. Winded, the doctor gasped and twisted in pain. He managed to hang on to the collar of the man’s jacket, but dropped his revolver. Holmes went down to retrieve the weapon, in which time, their captive made his escape, hurling himself sideways, tearing free of his jacket and scrambling out through the door and away along the ginnel.

Watson made to follow, but Holmes bade him stay where he was and get his breath back. There was no sense in making a scene, he said; after all, the fellow could complain that he’d done nothing wrong but that they had waylaid him at gunpoint . . . and he’d be telling the truth. Watson groaned and rubbed at his chest. “That chap’s plainly frightened of something,” he observed.

Holmes nodded as he rifled the pockets of the discarded jacket. “Yes, and whatever it is . . . he was more frightened of that than he was of your trusty Webley.”

He made a thorough search of the garment, but found only one or two items of interest: a particularly nasty lock knife, its blade at least six inches long and honed to razor sharpness, its hinge well oiled so the weapon could be drawn and flicked open at a moment’s notice; and a small, leather-bound notebook, with two entries in it. Both were written in pencil, in a spidery hand. They read:

Watson was shocked. “Good grief. The cad’s been onto you all day.”

Holmes nodded. “Not just me, though. Randolph Daker of Commercial Road . . . anyone we know?”

Watson shook his head. “I doubt it. Commercial Road’s up in the East End.”

“Perhaps we should pay it a visit?”

“Good Lord . . . I thought this neighborhood was dangerous.”

That afternoon they took a cab to the City, then proceeded on foot through the teeming slums of Cheapside and Whitechapel. Both men were already familiar with this neighborhood; it wasn’t ten years since the so-called Ripper had terrorized these hungry, crowded streets. The shocking depredations had brought the crime and squalor in the district to worldwide attention, but little, it seemed, had changed. The roadways were still filthy with mud and animal dung, the entries still cluttered with rubbish. The housing was of the poorest stock: sooty brown-brick tenements, damp, dismal, decaying, leaning against one another for mutual support. The inhabitants, and there were a great many of them—families vastly outnumbered dwellings in this part of London—were exclusively of the gaunt and needy variety. More often than not, rags passed for clothes, and beggary and drunkenness were the day’s chief occupations.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Watson muttered. “I’d have thought the Housing of the Working Classes Act would have resolved all this.”

Holmes shook his head. “Goodly intentions are no use without goodly sums of money, Watson. The property tax doesn’t provide funds even remotely sufficient to ease this level of degradation.”

Saddened by what they saw, but, inevitably, more concerned with the job at hand, they pressed on, and an hour later, entered Commercial Road. Number 14 was a tall, narrow, terraced house, set back behind a fenced-off garden, now straggling and overgrown. The house’s lower windows bore no glass, but had boards nailed across them. Only jagged shards were visible in the upper windows.

“It looks derelict,” said Watson.

“It may look derelict, but someone’s been in and out recently,” Holmes replied. He indicated a path leading from the gate to the front door. It was unpaved, but had been beaten through the undergrowth by the regular passage of feet. Several stems of weeds were freshly broken.

They approached the door, which they noticed was standing ajar by a couple of inches. Holmes pushed it open. Beyond, the house was filled with shadow. A nauseating odor, like fish oil or stagnant brine, flowed out.

The detective raised his voice: “Would Mr. Randolph Daker be at home?”

There was no reply. Holmes glanced at Watson, shrugged, and went in. The interior of the building was unimaginably filthy. A litter of rotten food, abandoned clothes, and broken furniture strewed every floorway. The wallpaper, what little there was left of it, hung in torn-down strips; here and there, there were smeared green handprints on it. The smell intensified the farther in they ventured. “Hello?” Watson called again. Still, nobody answered.

At length, they found themselves in what might once have passed for a sitting room. It was cluttered with the same foul wreckage as the rest of the house. Watson was about to call out a third time when Holmes stopped him. The doctor could immediately tell that his friend’s catlike senses had alerted him to something. A tense second passed, then there came a faint shuffle from somewhere close by. An object fell over. There was a grunt, brutish and animalistic . . . and a figure came shambling into view from the doorway connecting to the kitchen and scullery.

It wore a cheap, ill-fitted suit, which had burst at many of its seams. Tendrils of what at first looked like seaweed protruded through them. The same vile matter hung from the figure’s hands and face, and now, as it lurched slowly into the open, it was clear that this was not part of any disguise. Whoever the wretched creature might once have been, his head was now a bloated mass of barnacles and marine-type growths. Vitreous, octopus-like eyes rolled amid thick folds of polyp-ridden flesh. Warty lips hung open on a bottomless, fishlike mouth.

Holmes and Watson could only stand stock-still, gazing at the apparition. It tried to speak to them, but only meaningless blubberings came out. Recognizing its inability to communicate, it gave a sharp, keening squeal, then lumbered forward, deformed hands outstretched. It was almost upon them when Watson came to himself. “Back, Holmes, back! Don’t let it touch you!”

The two friends retreated, and unable to reach them, the monstrosity, which suddenly seemed to be ailing, slumped down to its knees, then fell forward onto its face. Its shoulders heaved three times as it struggled to breathe, then it lay still.

A stunned silence followed, finally broken by Holmes: “Randolph Daker, esquire, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

Watson knelt beside the body and pulled his gloves on. He was still reluctant to touch the thing, even with his hands protected.

“Have you ever seen the like of this before?” the detective asked him.

The doctor shook his head. “Some kind of fungal infection, but . . . it’s so advanced.”

“Is he dead?”

Watson nodded. “He is now.” He glanced up. “What on earth is going on here?”

“We must root around,” Holmes replied. “Uncover anything we can that links this fellow Daker with Harold Jobson.”

They began to search the premises, and immediately saw through the scullery window that the house’s rear yard had been adapted into a makeshift stable. A flimsy plank roof had been set up. Below it, up to its fetlocks in dung and dirty straw, stood a thin, bedraggled horse.

“Daker was a carter,” said Watson.

“In which case, he must have kept records,” Holmes replied. “Keep searching.”

Within moments, Watson had found a wad of dockets held together by a bulldog clip. “Receipts,” he said.

Holmes came over to him. “Find the most recent one.”

Watson leafed through them. The faint writing, poorly scribbled in pencil, was just about legible. “The last job he did was on April twenty-second, when he was to ‘collect sundry items for Mr. Rohampton’ . . . Tibbut’s Wharf, Wapping.”

Holmes was already making for the door. “Not twenty minutes from here. Most convenient.”

“Oh yes . . . now I remember,” said the pier master at Tibbut’s Wharf, a bearded giant in an old seaman’s cap. “That was the American chap, wasn’t it?”

“American?” said Holmes with interest.

The pier master nodded, then tapped his fingers on his desk. “Mr. Rohampton. He came in himself and made the booking. There were several crates and three passengers. They arrived on the morning tide on April twenty-second, on the Lucy Dark, a private charter from . . .” His memory faded. “Now, where was it . . . place called Innsmouth, I think? Does that ring a bell?”

“Innsmouth, Massachusetts?” Holmes asked.

“No, no, no.” The bearded chap shook his head. “Innsmouth, America.”

“I see. Well, your powers of recall do you credit.”

The pier master leaned back on his stool. “I couldn’t very well forget it. The passengers were all parceled up in bandages. Head to foot, they were. I assume this bloke Rohampton’s a doctor of some sort, and these were his patients?”

“Very possibly,” Holmes replied. “What else can you tell us about him.”

“If you’ll wait one moment . . .” The pier master opened a register and ran a thick-nailed finger down his various lists. “I think I’ve got a business address for him.”

Burlington Mews was a side street off Aldgate. Though it was part of the moneyed business district, much of the property down there was currently “to let.” Only one unit was in fact occupied; Rohampton’s Tea & Ginger. For a quaint-sounding company, its windows were partially shuttered, its decayed frontage smothered in grime. Only dusty blackness lay beyond its mullioned panes.

Holmes made to enter straightaway, but Watson held him back. “I say . . . aren’t we rushing into this, rather?”

Holmes considered. “Jobson said we have two or three days . . . at the most. We’ve already dithered for the better part of one day. I think it’s best if we press on as hard as we can.”

“Holmes?” Watson said. “Is everything all right? You seem . . . anxious.”

Again, the detective considered. It was one of those very rare moments when he appeared to be at a loss for words. “I’ve always, as you know, Watson, been a firm believer that every event has its cause and effect . . . is explicable, no matter how bizarre the circumstance, in scientific terms.”

Watson nodded.

Holmes regarded him gravely. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t worlds of strangeness that you and I have yet to encounter.” And he went inside.

More curious now than ever, Watson followed.

It was a small suite of offices, paneled in drab, dark wood, and extremely cramped. Even though the May day without was fine and bright, little sunlight filtered inside. No candles burned, no flames flickered in the grate. As well as the pervading gloom, there was also a distinct chill, an air of dankness. For all that, Burgess, the clerk who attended the visitors, seemed perfectly at ease in the environment. He was a short but thickset man, with only a few strands of hair combed over his otherwise bald pate, and a smug look on his pale, rough-cut face. When he approached, he did so with a pronounced limp; one of his legs appeared to be much sturdier than the other.

Holmes introduced himself, then offered a gloved hand. The clerk shook it. The detective at once took note of the fellow’s fingers. They were coarse and callused, the nails broken and dirty. The one thing that didn’t besmear them, however, was ink. Neither, Holmes noted, were there any ink stains on the blotter on the clerk’s desk, nor any writing on the ledger that was open there. While the clerk lumbered off to find his employer, the detective glanced farther afield. It didn’t surprise him to observe a fine sheen of dust covering the nearby wall of book spines, and strands of unbroken cobweb over the shelves where the stationery was stored.

“Gentleman!” came a cultured American voice.

They turned and, for the first time, beheld Julian Rohampton. He came lithely out from the dim rear section of his premises. There was at once an aura of the school sports captain about him. He was tall, of impressive build, and had a shock of fine golden hair. At first glance, he was exceedingly handsome, though up close he had a white, curiously waxen pallor and a silky, almost solid texture to his flesh. When he smiled, only his mouth seemed to move. His eyes remained deep set and startlingly bright.

“Mr. Rohampton?” said Holmes.

“The same. And you are the famous Sherlock Holmes?”

“I am. This is my friend Dr. Watson.”

“I’m honored,” said Rohampton. “But what fascinating murder case can have brought you here?”

“No murder case,” Holmes replied, “. . . as far as we’re aware.”

“We’re looking into—” Watson began, but Holmes cut him short.

“We’re looking into a theft. Our client has recently imported goods from America, and somewhere in transit between Tibbut’s Wharf and his home in Greenwich, certain of these goods have gone missing. I learned from the pier master that you yourself recently brought items into the country via Tibbut’s Wharf. I take it you haven’t experienced similar problems?”

Rohampton thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not as I’m aware. It’s not that I make a habit of shipping in goods, you understand. The recent cargo was mainly botanical specimens. They were intended for an associate of mine. He certainly hasn’t complained that anything was missing.”

“I’m glad,” Holmes said. “Of course that doesn’t mean that no attempt at theft was made. The passengers who accompanied your imports, I take it they reported nothing unusual?”

Rohampton gave him a quizzical look. “Passengers? There weren’t any passengers. At least, if there were, they have no connection with my business.”

“I see.” Holmes sniffed. “In which case, that concludes the matter.” He made a move back to the door. “Thanks for your assistance. Please don’t let us trouble you any further—”

“Wait gentlemen, please,” Rohampton entreated. “It’s no trouble to have such lauded guests. Won’t you stop for a drop of sherry?”

Burgess had reappeared from the rear chambers, now carrying a tray on which sat a dark bottle and three crystal goblets.

“Well,” said Watson, eyeing the tipple thirstily . . .

“Thank you, no,” Holmes put in, quite firmly. “We have a lot of work ahead of us. It wouldn’t do to get too light-headed.”

Rohampton made an amiable gesture. “Whatever you wish. Good day to you, then.”

“Oh . . .” Holmes said, before leaving, “there is one minor thing. Would it be possible to speak to your associate . . . the gentleman who received the shipment, just to ensure the consignment was untampered with?”

“Surely,” said Rohampton. “His name is Marsh, Obed Marsh. Here, let me write it down for you. He’s a former sea captain turned botanist . . . interesting fellow.”

He took a pen from his upper breast pocket and, tearing a strip from the blotter on the clerk’s table, scratched out a quick address. His mouth curved in a rictal grin as he handed it over . . . again, that grin failed to travel to his eyes. “If anything is missing, you’ll let me know? Obviously it won’t do to be stolen from, and not realize it.”

“Of course,” said Holmes.

Five minutes later, they were seated in a cab and bound across the City for Liverpool Street. The piece of paper they had been given read 2 Sun Lane, which both knew as a small cul-de-sac directly behind the railway station.

“Curious chap,” said Watson as they rode. “Did you notice, his facial expression hardly changed once?”

“I also noticed that he is little given to work,” Holmes replied.

“How do you deduce that?”

“Come, Watson. There was minimal evidence in that office that any work is done there. And if that fellow Burgess is a clerk, then he’s recently made it his new calling in life. That limp of his suggests he’s more familiar with the ball and chain than the accounts book.”

“So what about Obed Marsh?”

Holmes rubbed his chin. “He, I am uncertain about. But I fancy Mr. Julian Rohampton was rather too ready to give us his address, wouldn’t you say?”

The cabbie let them down at the mouth of the court in question, took his fare, and drove off. For a moment, they stood and stared, and listened as well. Sun Lane was little more than a grubby access way. Various bins and sacks of rubbish were stacked along it. It was hemmed in by high brick walls, and at its far end, a single door connecting with some rear portion of the railway station stood locked and chained. Nothing moved down there, though it echoed to the racket of shunting locomotives and tooting whistles.

“And a botanist lives here?” said Holmes tightly. “I think not.”

He ushered Watson to one side, and they took shelter behind a clutter of old tea chests. Moments later, a curtained carriage appeared at the end of the street. The two men watched in silence as the coachman sat there, unmoving, a scarf about his face. A moment passed, then the curtain twitched and a sinister object poked out . . . something like a hefty gun barrel, though it consisted not of one muzzle, but nine or ten, all bound tightly together in a tubular steel bundle.

Watson seized Holmes by the wrist. “Good Lord,” he whispered. “Good Lord in Heaven . . . that’s a Gatling gun!”

“No doubt fresh from America with whatever else our cold-eyed friend imported,” said Holmes quietly. “Little wonder they lured us to a cul-de-sac.”

“Great Scott!” Watson breathed. Only now was the nature of those they confronted beginning to dawn on him. “What . . . what do we do?”

“I suggest we lay low for a moment.”

Both men held their ground and waited. Minutes passed, during which the team of horses became uneasy and began to paw the ground. The coachman himself stirred, and started to glance around as though confused. At long last, a pedestrian arrived, sloping along, hands in pockets. Holmes and Watson immediately recognized him as the bowler-hatted fellow who’d attempted to follow them on Pickle Herring Street. Rather conspicuously, he was still without his jacket. He shuffled about for a moment when he reached the carriage, then leaned back against the nearby wall. To Holmes’s eye, the fellow’s posture gave him away . . . he was tense, in fact alarmed.

“Yes,” mumbled the detective. “Something should have happened by now, shouldn’t it, my friend? Well . . . don’t let us disappoint you.” Calmly, he produced a police whistle from his pocket and blew three sharp blasts on it.

The effect was instantaneous. The coachman whipped his team away without hesitation, the carriage bouncing on the cobbles as it tore around the corner into Bishopsgate. It barely gave whoever was manning the machine gun time to flick the curtain back over it, let alone the bowler-hatted chap time to climb aboard. He now found himself entirely alone and in full view of anyone who happened along. In a panic, he turned and began to run in the opposite direction.

Holmes tapped Watson on the arm, and they rose and followed. Moments later, they were threading through the crowds on the forecourt of Liverpool Street station. Not twenty yards ahead, the bowler-hatted chap had stopped at one of the ticket barriers, where he handed over some change, then bullocked his way through, glancing once over his shoulder, his brutish face a stark purple red in color. If he’d spotted either Holmes or Watson, he didn’t betray it, but hurried off down a flight of steps toward the platforms.

“Where did that man just buy a ticket to?” Watson demanded of the clerk on the barrier.

The clerk shook his head. “Nowhere, sir. It was a platform ticket. Only cost tuppence.”

“Two platform tickets,” Holmes replied, handing over fourpence.

Moments later, they were hastening down the steps in pursuit. At the bottom, they gazed left and right. Thankfully, their prey was still distinctive in his hat and shirtsleeves. He was just in the process of descending another flight of steps.

“He’s going to the underground railway,” Watson said, surprised.

Holmes didn’t reply. A hideous idea had suddenly occurred to him, one which he instinctively wished to put aside, but now found that he couldn’t.

They followed the bowler-hatted man onto the westbound platform of the Metropolitan Line, and there, briefly, lost him in the gaggle of commuters. It was the end of the day, after all . . . the station was now at its busiest. They’d fought their way down to the first-class section before they caught sight of him again. To both their amazement, the fellow, having reached the very end of the platform, slipped down onto the rails directly behind the train, and vanished into the wall of wafting steam.

“What the devil . . . ,” Watson began.

“Hurry!” Holmes said.

They, too, jumped down, and a moment later found themselves stumbling along the rails, pressing on into the tunnel, which was smoky and hot and echoing and reechoing with the furious crashes and bangs of the underground railway system. Several yards farther on, just as Watson was about to call time on the pursuit, fearing that they were endangering their lives, they saw an open area to the left-hand side, with a dull glow filtering into it from a high skylight. They entered and stopped for a moment, breathing hard and surveying the ground. It was thick with dust and strewn with rags and litter. The fresh footprints of their quarry, however, led clear across it and ended beside a wide, rusty grating, which sat open against the wall. Below this, iron ladders dropped into darkness. The smell that exhaled from that forbidding aperture was as vile and as cloying as either man had ever known.

Watson put a handkerchief to his nose. “You don’t suppose he’s really gone down there?”

Again, Holmes didn’t answer. Watson glanced around, and found his friend staring down at the scrap of paper that Jobson had given them.

“Holmes?”

“Watson,” the detective finally whispered, “. . . Harold Jobson deceived us. But only slightly. He didn’t leave us a puzzle. He left us a map.”

“A map?” Watson was astonished. He gazed at the paper for a moment, then down into the foul recesses below the grating. “Not . . . not of the sewers, surely?”

Holmes indicated the numerous tenuous lines on Jobson’s paper, and the way they all seemed to reach a common confluence at the right-hand side of the page. “These are the interceptory sewers built by Bazalgette some thirty years ago . . . they divert the city’s waste eastward from the main sewers, and studiously avoid the Thames.” When he mentioned the river, he indicated a thicker central line with a downward loop that was suddenly reminiscent of the point where the River Thames curved around the Isle of Dogs. Holmes indicated two pencil-scrawled blobs, also at the right-hand side of the map. “Here is the Abbey Mills pumping station in Stratford . . . and here the sewage treatment works at Beckton.”

“But what does the red circle signify?” Watson wondered.

Holmes couldn’t suppress a shudder. “Well, it lies to the left; in other words, to the west of the city center. If I am correct, this straight line passing through it will be one of the mains that brings fresh water from the drinking reservoirs at Surbiton and Hampton. Watson . . . this circle, whatever it indicates, is located at a point after the water is passed through the filters.”

Watson felt a crawling between his shoulders. “Jobson said there’d be a calamity . . . dear God, would that be a water-borne calamity?”

Holmes’s skin had paled to an ashy gray.

“We must send for Lestrade straight away,” Watson insisted.

Holmes struggled with this, then shook his head. “There’s no time. Come . . . we have a map.”

He bent down as though to climb under the grating, but Watson stopped him. “For God’s sake . . . you can’t mean to venture into the sewers?”

Holmes glanced up at him. “What choice do we have?”

“In the name of heaven . . . you’ll need waders, a safety lamp, some sort of lifeline—”

“Watson . . . this may be the gravest case you and I have ever embarked on,” Holmes replied, staring at his friend. “Personal safety cannot even enter the equation.”

Subterranean London was a multilayered labyrinth of lost sewers, underground railways, pipes, tunnels, culverts, and conduits of every description, a sprawling network of forgotten passages comprising centuries of buried architecture, level upon level of it, from the medieval to the very modern. It was so vast and deep that no known maps covered it in its entirety. It was also hellishly black, and constantly swimming in a foul miasma from the rivers of excrement and industrial and chemical ooze that meandered back and forth through its slimy entrails.

Once down there, Holmes made a torch by tying pieces of rag around a broken stave, and bade Watson do the same, though even then they proceeded with utmost caution, wading warily westward along arched passages of ancient, sweating brickwork. Everything they saw was caked in the most loathsome detritus. Strands of putrid filth hung in their faces; the squeaking of rats was all around them; there was a continuous rumble and groan from the streets above. Persistently, Watson advised against the foolhardiness of such an enterprise, warning about the dangers of Weil’s disease, hepatitis, bubonic plague. “And these naked flames,” he added worriedly. “They’re a perilous option on our part. Suppose we encounter firedamp?”

“That’s a chance we must take,” Holmes replied, again consulting the map as they approached a junction. “If we turn right here, I believe we’ll be cutting north onto the Piccadilly branch.”

“Holmes!” Watson protested. “This is a deadly serious matter. Suppose there’s a sudden downpour? These pipes get flooded!”

Holmes looked up. “Watson . . . I am perfectly aware of the risks we are taking. Believe me, I wouldn’t have brought myself, let alone my dearest friend, into such danger if I wasn’t absolutely convinced of its necessity.”

“But, Holmes—”

“Watson, I can’t force you to accompany me. If you wish to return to the surface and hunt down Lestrade, then by all means do so. You’d be serving a useful purpose. But I must continue.”

He was wearing his most no-nonsense expression. It was at once plain how utterly serious he was. Finally, Watson shook his head. “And a fine thing that would be . . . for dearest friends to abandon each other in their hour of need.” He smiled bravely.

Holmes smiled back, then gripped his companion by the shoulder. “This maze may appear daunting, but Jobson’s map is not too difficult to follow. He must have been this way many times himself, to be able to draw it from memory while sitting in the death cell. If he can manage it, I fancy we can.”

They plodded on for another fifteen minutes, making turns both left and right, occasionally passing under manholes and ventilation grilles beyond which the upper world was briefly visible. The overwhelming stench of rottenness and sewage became slowly bearable, but that didn’t lessen the visual horrors in London’s dark and fetid bowels. Here and there, gluts of offal were heaped, having been jettisoned from the slaughterhouses; the carcasses of cats and dogs lay decaying, enriching the already poisonous waterways in the most rancid and sickening fashion.

“I doubt anything they could put in the drinking water could be worse than this brew,” Watson commented as they sloshed into a low-roofed, egg-shaped passage, which seemed to run endlessly in a roughly northwesterly direction. “Where is this place you mentioned, anyway? Innsmouth? I’ve never even heard of . . . GOOD GOD, LOOK OUT . . .”

With a reptilian hiss and a ferocious snapping of gigantic jaws, something came barreling out of the noisome darkness in front of them.

“HOLMES!” Watson shouted again, then he was dealt a blow to the chest, which sent him reeling backward.

The torch flew from his hand and extinguished itself in the thrashing water, but not before it cast a fleeting glow on ten to twenty feet of gleaming leathery scales, on a colossal tail swishing back and forth, on an immense saurian-like head filled with daggers for teeth.

Holmes, too, had fallen back, though he maintained his balance and held his light out before him. Its wavering flame reflected in two hideous crimson orbs, but also on a stout iron chain, which was connected at one end to a plate in the tunnel wall, and at the other to a thick ring clamped around the monster’s neck. Gasping and choking, Watson scrambled back to his feet, then dug his revolver from his overcoat pocket.

“I wouldn’t,” Holmes advised. “Not unless you want to deprive Inspector Lestrade of his next triumph.”

Watson had already taken aim with the weapon, but now lowered it. “You . . . you think that’s the animal missing from the zoo?”

“I’m certain of it,” said Holmes. “Unless there’s a breeding population of krokodilos down here in the London sewers, which I seriously doubt.”

He ventured forward to get a closer look. Watson went with him. The brute was now entirely visible, a squat, broad monstrosity, so large it was only half submerged in the brackish fluids. It filled the passage from one side to the other, and now simply sat there, its mouth agape and steaming in a defiant show of menace . . . though a show was about all it could manage. By the torchlight, it could be seen that the chain holding the thing was only three or so feet in length and already pulled taut; it meant the savage beast could successfully block access to the tunnel but was unable to advance and pursue those it turned away.

“Whoever went to the trouble of procuring this guard dog must be very committed to their privacy,” Holmes mused.

“It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us both,” said Watson. “We were virtually on top of it.”

“Yes . . . mind you, reptiles draw their energy from sunlight.” Holmes glanced up at the low roof. “This creature hasn’t had that opportunity for several days. Fortunately for us, it’s rather sluggish at the moment.”

“It’ll still tear us to pieces if we try to get past it.”

“That’s true, Watson.”

“Do you think there’s another way?”

“It wouldn’t be logical for whoever’s hiding down here to only block off one access route, unless the other one was very well hidden.”

Watson raised his revolver again. “In which case, we’ve no option.”

“Did you shoot many crocodiles in India?”

“Not even one.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Holmes pushed the revolver down. “I doubt a small-caliber firearm like yours will do more than injure this creature. On the other hand, what it will do is alert our real foe. I fancy these sewers would make marvelous echo chambers.”

Reluctantly, Watson pocketed the Webley.

“There will be another way, however,” Holmes said. “I’m sure our bowler-hatted friend hasn’t chanced this animal’s jaws. Let’s backtrack a little.”

They retreated for several yards, until Holmes cast his light on a small grid placed among the arched bricks of the ceiling. Like everything else down there, it was thick with grime, and at the most only two feet wide by one foot high. Holmes examined it carefully.

“This is an overflow pipe,” he said after a moment.

“Connecting with what?”

“The Walbrook, I imagine.”

“The Walbrook?” Watson was startled. “But that river hasn’t been seen for centuries.”

“Then this is truly a voyage of discovery,” Holmes replied.

He thrust his long fingers through the grating and tugged at it experimentally. It came loose almost at once. “As I thought,” he said. “This has been forced open sometime quite recently.” The bolts that had once secured the grid in place had clearly been broken . . . amid the coat of rust, their jagged edges still shone with the luster of clean cast iron. “Which hopefully means our passage through will be unobstructed.”

“It isn’t likely to stay that way,” observed Watson, giving his friend a leg up. “Not when my bulk gets jammed inside it.”

Despite Watson’s misgivings, the next few moments were relatively comfortable. The connecting line to the Walbrook was no more than a tube, but it was smoothly cylindrical and, as Holmes had predicted, clear of debris. Though it was something of a squeeze, it took them only a minute or two to forge its ten or twelve feet, then jump down again into the brown, foaming waters of the subterranean river. Thigh-deep, they pressed on, having to duck under bars and buttresses, but at last emerging into a tall vaulted chamber that was something like a cathedral side chapel. Torrents of water poured into it from various high portals. The vast bulk of the flow then plunged away down a steep, circular shaft.

“What do you think that is?” Watson wondered. He indicated a narrow wooden door on a dry ledge.

“Possibly a relief room,” Holmes replied. “Where the flusher crews take a rest.” A moment passed, then he glanced at their “map.” “At least that may be what it once was used for. According to Harold Jobson, it now has a different purpose entirely.”

Watson glanced over Holmes’s shoulder and saw again the circle of red ink. Whatever it signified, they were now upon it.

The door was not locked. Immediately beyond it, however, there was a small antechamber, in which a grim warning awaited. There was a second door, and beside it three iron hooks had been hammered into the wall, presumably for equipment. Now, however, two dead bodies hung there.

Holmes and Watson approached them with trepidation. At first glance, the bodies resembled Egyptian mummies. They were swathed in linen bandages, their heads as well as their torsos, though most of the bindings were now loose and filthied. In both cases, the left arm had been unwrapped. Watson examined the exposed limbs. On the insides of both elbow joints, the black bruises of old puncture wounds were visible. The doctor had seen similar wounds on drug addicts, though these were larger and less numerous. More shocking to him was the fact that in either case, the fingers of the victim appeared to be webbed, and that hard patches of shiny, mottled skin occupied areas of the wrists and upper arms, which looked distinctly like scaling. Baffled, he made to uncover the first body’s head.

Holmes stopped him. “I shouldn’t,” he said quietly. “It might be more than you can stomach at this moment. In any case, our real business awaits us through here.” He indicated the next door.

With a crackle of grit, they were able to force it open, and found themselves at the head of a concrete ramp, which led down into a long, spacious chamber now lit by numerous candles. Possibly, the room had once been used for storage—the ramp suggested that wheelbarrows and the like were taken in and out—but now it had been customized into something like a laboratory. Several items of furniture were in there, mainly tables and sideboards, all laden with bottles and test tubes. Beside them, a variety of opened boxes and crates lay scattered. The next thing Holmes saw caused him to nudge Watson’s shoulder. The doctor glanced up and spotted a large cast-iron pipe branching across the ceiling from one side of the chamber to the other, snaking through a canopy of dust-laden cobwebs. Coupled together by bored-socket-and-spigot joints, it bespoke of masterly and care-filled engineering, which suggested only one thing . . .

“The water main,” said Holmes. “And so vulnerable. What would you say . . . ten feet up? One would only need a ladder and a hammer and chisel, and one could penetrate it with ease.”

But Watson had spied something else, something even more astonishing. Wordlessly, he drew Holmes’s attention to a figure at the extreme northern end of the chamber. At first the fellow had been invisible in the dim light, hidden behind an array of connected tubes and vessels, but now, as their eyes attuned to the gloom, they could make him out more clearly. He hadn’t yet noticed them, and appeared to be working feverishly beside a truckle bed on which another of the mummified patients lay under a thin blanket. The fellow was in late middle age, and wore his facial hair in a long, graying beard. He also wore round-lensed spectacles.

“Holmes . . .” said Watson in disbelief. “Holmes . . . that’s Professor Langley. Good God! He’s dead . . . he was burned to a crisp!”

“Someone was burned to a crisp,” Holmes replied. “Evidently not Langley.”

Langley—if it was Langley—was dusty and unshaven, and stripped to his grimy shirtsleeves. He appeared gaunt and sallow-faced with lack of sleep. He was currently operating a hand pump, attached to a rubber tube, which ran from an embedded syringe in the patient’s arm to a complex construction of valves, pipes, and glass jars set up on a low table beside him. With each depression of the pump, a thick stream of blood visibly jetted into the topmost jar. Several of the lower jars were already filled. At the base of the device, a thin, transparent substance was dripping into a flask.

“He’s transfusing blood,” said Watson. “But into what? It looks like a distillation unit.”

Holmes rubbed his chin. “He’s taking something from the blood. Some essence, perhaps . . .”

“How remarkable you are, Holmes,” came a rich American voice behind them.

Both men turned sharply to find the ramp blocked, not only by Rohampton, but by the brutish fellow in the bowler hat and by the clerk, Burgess, who had detached the Gatling gun from its tripod and now cradled it in his arms so that it was trained squarely on them; a full ammunition belt, partially fed into its firing mechanism, was draped over his arm.

Watson went for the revolver in his pocket, but Rohampton shouted a warning. “Don’t even think about it, Doctor!” He tapped the machine gun’s heavy muzzle. “You’re a former military man. You know what this weapon can do.”

“In God’s name, Rohampton!” Watson cried. “What horrors are you engaged in here?”

“Horrors, Doctor? How very judgmental of you.”

“Judgmental? When you’re draining people’s blood to the last drop!”

Rohampton gave an almost sad smile, then shouldered his way past the two intruders, walking down the ramp into the center of the lab. The bowler-hatted man followed. Burgess brought up the rear, indicating with the Gatling that Holmes and Watson should go first, pushing them down ahead of him.

“These people . . . as you call them,” the American said, “are volunteers. They have willingly surrendered their lives for a greater good.” He glanced across the room, to where Professor Langley now watched events from behind his racks of flasks and tubes. “Keep working, Langley!”

“But if they’ve seen this much . . .” the professor protested.

“Trent!” Rohampton said sharply. “Remind our friend the professor why it is so important that he keep his mind on the task at hand.”

The bowler-hatted man wove his way across the lab, then drew the curtain back on a small alcove at the other side. Beyond it was a chilling sight. A hospital operating table was propped upright against the dank bricks of the alcove wall, and strapped to this by several belts was a young girl. She still wore the bedraggled tatters of nightclothes, and her fair hair hung in tangled, dirty knots. She gazed at Holmes and Watson pleadingly, but was unable to speak owing to a tight gag pulled across her mouth. Clearly, this was Laura, Professor Langley’s daughter.

Directly in front of her there sat an open barrel, stuffed with a green, spongy herbage. Rohampton now approached it, stripping off his frock coat as he did. He took a rubber apron from the wall, along with two heavy-duty industrial gauntlets, and put the entire assembly on. Then he gingerly dipped one gloved hand into the barrel.

“You see this, Holmes?” he said, lifting up a handful of the green material. “Devil’s Reef Moss. It’s virtually unique. It grows only in one particular place off the New England coast. Don’t ask me why, I’m not the scientist here . . .”

Holmes watched carefully. Something about that handful of rank vegetation touched a deep primal fear within him. “Presumably it’s toxic?”

“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” Rohampton replied, gazing at the moss as if fascinated. “But then why am I telling you? You’ve seen the results for yourself.”

“Randolph Daker,” said Holmes.

The American opened his hand and wiggled his fingers, making sure to return every scrap of moss to the barrel. “That’s correct. Daker . . . the only weak link in our chain. Inevitably, he’d seen something of what we were about, yet what was he? A common carter, a ruffian, a drunkard . . . likely to gossip the first time he got into his cups. We couldn’t allow that, Holmes . . . so we spiced those cups.”

“Rather glad we didn’t sample your sherry,” said the detective.

Rohampton smiled. “Yes . . . very intuitive of you. Of course, the moss is quite slow acting. Eventually we became concerned that even infected as he was, Daker might still blab.”

“So you dispatched one of your followers to put him out of his misery?”

“That’s right.”

Holmes glanced at the fellow called Trent. “He wasn’t terribly efficient.”

Rohampton began to strip off his gauntlets. “These are the tools we must work with, I’m afraid. When one recruits at short notice, and can offer in return only vague promises of wealth and power . . . one is lucky to draw on anything more than the sweepings of the streets. Harold Jobson was a case in point. He and several others successfully orchestrated the kidnap of Professor Langley and his daughter, replacing them in their burning home with two drunken derelicts snatched from the backstreets . . . and then Jobson went and allowed himself to be captured.” The American shook his head with feigned regret.

“You are aware, I suppose,” said Holmes, “that it was Jobson who led us to you?”

Rohampton made a vague gesture, as if it hardly mattered. “He took his death sentence with a pinch of salt. I think he expected to be rescued virtually up till the final day. Only then did his ambition switch from survival to revenge.” Rohampton gave a cold chuckle. “As if anyone in my position has the time or inclination to save the necks of fools.”

Watson, meanwhile, was staring at the bandaged form lying on the truckle bed. All the while Langley had continued pumping out its blood. By the lifeless manner in which its arm now lay by its side, it was evident that this patient, too, had expired. “These so-called volunteers?” he said distastefully. “Who are they?”

Rohampton was now removing the apron. He moved back into the lab, beating brick dust from his dress shirt. “Their names are unimportant. Suffice to say this . . . they were chosen from among the ranks of my native townsmen.”

“Innsmouth,” said Holmes.

For the first time, the American seemed surprised. “You know it?”

“Only stories,” the detective replied. “About the tainting of the Innsmouth bloodline some fifty years ago . . . and how the townsfolk have been degenerating ever since.”

“Degenerating?” If it was possible for the white, rigid features of Julian Rohampton to grimace with rage, they did so now. “Some would call it evolving. Into a higher life-form.”

“If it’s so high a form,” Holmes asked, “why do you hide behind that waxen mask?”

There was a moment of silence, Watson gazing from man to man, bewildered. His gaze settled on Rohampton when the American suddenly hooked his fingers into claws and began to attack his own face. In strips and gobbets, he tore away what had clearly been a finely crafted disguise. Beneath it, the flesh was a pallid gray blue in tone. More horrible yet, it was patterned with scales and fishlike ridges. The lips and eyebrows were thick and rubbery, the nose nonexistent. Down either cheek, lines of gills were visible.

Watson could scarcely believe the abomination before him. “Good . . . Lord!”

Rohampton wiped off the last fragments, then removed his blond wig. “Behold, Dr. Watson, the Innsmouth look! When Obed Marsh returned to us from the South Seas, he brought more than just a new wife. He’d intermarried with a race of beings in every way superior. When the bloodlines were fully mingled, Innsmouth became the cradle of a truly new civilization. As the generations passed and we natives of the town slowly transformed, a cosmic awareness began to dawn on us . . . of the Deep Ones, of their culture and science and beliefs, and of our destiny to be as one with them. In time, I will join their teeming ranks beneath the waves. And I won’t be alone!”

Holmes remained dispassionate. He strolled to the nearest table, surveying the many bottles of chemicals there. Rohampton’s men watched him warily.

“You’re creating a bacillus, I take it?” he said, picking up an open jar. He noted with interest that it had dry salts encrusted around its rim. When he sniffed it, he detected picric acid, as he’d suspected.

“Put that down, Mr. Holmes,” said Rohampton firmly.

Holmes turned to face him. “Distilling an infectious agent from the life fluids of your own people . . . is that what you’re about?”

“You know I am.” Even now, Rohampton couldn’t resist boasting. “I’m tapping the genetic core of my race. Courtesy, of course, of Professor Langley’s biochemical genius.”

Watson glanced again at the pipe running overhead. One would only need a ladder and a hammer and chisel, Holmes had said. “And you intend to impregnate London’s water supply with this thing?” he blurted out.

“The loyal Watson gets there in the end,” said Rohampton, so amused that he hadn’t noticed that Holmes had still not put down the picric jar.

“It’s . . . it’s inhuman,” Watson stammered.

The monstrous thing smiled, now fully and broadly. “Certainly it’s inhuman. But tell me, is that necessarily to the detriment? Has humanity made such a work of art of this planet that a scheme to transform it into something better should be decried?”

“To transform humanity?” Holmes scoffed, sensing rather than seeing the rusty iron plate set into the tabletop quite close to him.

“Don’t be too quick to jeer, Holmes,” Rohampton retorted. “Loud and filthy as she is . . . London is still is the crossroads of world commerce. Once she falls, the rest will follow.”

“A grand conquest indeed,” said Holmes, reaching toward the iron plate with the acid jar. “And all achieved from a hole in the ground, with a few bottles of solvent . . .”

Professor Langley realized what the detective was doing first, and ducked beneath the table.

“HOLMES!” Rohampton warned.

“. . . and a flash of inspiration!”

The moment the picric crystals met the exposed iron, they detonated.

There was a dazzling flash, a crunching bang, then glass was flying and the dank laboratory was filled with smoke. Rohampton and his men covered their eyes. Holmes went down, flung backward by the force of the blast, but he was up again just as quickly. With all his strength, he turned over the smoking, wreckage-strewn table, sending it toppling against the distillation unit, which fell heavily to the floor and burst apart in a welter of fresh-drawn blood.

Watson, meanwhile, took the opportunity to drag his revolver from his pocket. With a soldierly impulse, he turned first to Burgess, who was wielding the Gatling gun, took aim, and squeezed off a shot. The report crashed and crashed in the deep chamber, but the bullet flew straight, hitting the thug in the left shoulder, sending him staggering backward into the curtained alcove, dropping his deadly weapon. Automatically, Watson turned and pumped two shots at Trent. This second hireling had now snatched up an iron bar. The first bullet punched into his throat, however, the second into his chest. He dropped without a sound, his eyes rolled white in his brutal face.

But in the brief space of time afforded by the chemical explosion, only so much resistance had been possible . . . and now Rohampton dashed forward. He’d already grabbed up the Gatling gun, and with an angry roar, he swung its hefty stock into Holmes’s side, then up against his temple, knocking him half senseless to the floor. Ten yards to his left, he sensed Watson falling to a crouch, his revolver leveled.

“Drop it, Doctor!” the hybrid roared, the Gatling gun trained firmly on Holmes. “Drop it . . . or your friend is dead!”

Instantly, Watson realized he had no choice. He only had three shots left, to the several dozen still visible in the machine gun’s ammo belt. “Don’t shoot,” he said, releasing the grip of the Webley so that it swung upside down from his finger. As gently as he could, he lowered it to the floor.

A moment passed, then Rohampton backed away a couple of yards, turned, and surveyed the destruction. His eyes flickered fleetingly over the body of Trent and the groaning, only semiconscious form of the professor, but when they located the shattered distillation unit, his features twisted into a hideous scowl. “Blast you and damn you, but you haven’t won anything yet!”

Holmes, though groggy, had come ’round sufficiently to start edging away across the floor. Watson saw that his face was marked with flash burns and riddled here and there with minor cuts. Worse seemed to be about to follow, however.

“You think I can’t re-create all this?” Rohampton barked, rounding on them again. “It’ll only take days, and this time you goddamn meddlers won’t be alive to interfere!”

He took aim at Holmes and was about to fire, when something suddenly distracted him . . . a muffled, guttural grunting. All three of them turned toward the alcove, where Laura Langley still hung in her bonds, now in a dead faint. She was not the object of their attention, however; it was Burgess . . . the so-called clerk, now more like something from a nightmare.

When Watson had wounded him, he’d tottered backward into the alcove, but only so far as the barrel of Devil’s Reef Moss, which he’d collided with, sought to steady himself against, and inadvertently had slipped into, hands and face first. Now he came slowly back into view . . . already thickly sprouting with shoots and fronds and hideous clusters of anemones. A vile stench of salt and sea caves came off him.

He lurched into their midst, swaying back and forth, gasping and hissing like a deep-sea diver, yet amid that pulsating mass of marine parasites, his eyes were still horribly human . . . and with another gurgling, agonized groan, he rolled them toward his master, who, even after all the things he had seen and done, was mesmerized with horror by the sight and stink.

“Get back, Burgess!” Rohampton shouted. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare!”

Possibly Burgess failed to hear, though more likely he chose not to . . . for he now blundered blindly toward the only person he knew who might somehow save him.

“Burgess!” Rohampton screamed, retreating swiftly, swinging the Gatling gun around. “BURGESS, GET AWAY FROM MEEEEE!”

The weapon fired with a thundering roar, flames and smoke gouting from its muzzle. The servant was ripped apart where he stood, each slug blowing bloody ribbons from his tortured flesh. He hurtled backward, his arms flailing, till he struck the far wall, which he slowly slid down, a gory trail on the bricks behind him . . . Rohampton didn’t let up, he fired and fired, but in doing so, he failed to notice Holmes rise to his feet, draw something from under his coat, and spring a blade into view.

It was Trent’s lock knife. The detective despised all weapons, and this tool of the gutter was particularly repellent to him . . . even so, in desperate times all needs must. He hurled the knife full-on, just as the hybrid turned back to face him. The blade struck home, slashing deeply into the American’s upper left arm. Rohampton gasped and twisted. The Gatling gun slumped down across his knees.

Taking his chance, Watson grabbed up his revolver.

“Don’t, Watson!” Rohampton snapped. “I’ll kill you both . . . I swear it!” But this time even he didn’t sound convinced.

His left arm now limp and useless, and running with blood, he was struggling both to support the heavy weapon and to keep it trained on its targets. With urgent pants, he backed away across the rubble-strewn room and up the ramp toward the door.

“You’ve still won nothing,” he said, but his voice was cracking with effort. He came up against the door and back-heeled it open. “We’ll breed you out yet!” Then he opened fire again.

Holmes lunged down behind the upended table. Watson went the other way, diving behind a brick buttress. Neither need have bothered, however . . . for the hail of random shots rattled inaccurately around the room, several rebounding and narrowly missing Rohampton himself. Furious, but knowing he had no option, he turned and scrambled out into the sewers.

“Come, Watson!” said Holmes, giving rapid chase.

“Are you all right, old man?” Watson asked, hurrying up the ramp alongside him.

“Never better. But beware . . . friend Rohampton is waging a war for his race. He’ll not be taken easily.”

The American’s trail was easy to follow. Even in the gloom of the sewers, his blood besmeared the brickwork and lay in oily swirls on the brackish waters. Though he took turn after turn, passage after passage, he hadn’t got too far when Holmes and Watson came in sight of him again. Once more, he turned and greeted their challenge with blazing gunfire. In the narrower confines of the culvert, the furious volley was far more deadly, and both men were forced to cower in the effluent.

“Gad!” Watson cursed. “This filth . . . mind you, he can’t hold us off for long. That bandolier must be almost spent.”

“He doesn’t need to hold us off for long,” Holmes replied. “Somewhere along here there’ll be a downflow pipe to the Thames. If he reaches that, he’s as good as free.”

“What do you mean?”

Holmes hurried on. “For Heaven’s sake, Watson . . . Rohampton is an amphibian, and the Thames connects with the sea. What I mean is he’ll shortly have escaped to a place where nobody can ever reach him!”

The full import of that dawning on him, Watson scrambled frantically in pursuit. They rounded a sharp bend and again were almost shot from their feet. Only ten yards ahead, Rohampton had stopped. Just behind him, there was a breach in the wall where a series of bricks had fallen through. From beyond it came the furious gushing of the downflow pipe.

The hybrid gave a riotous laugh. “Humanity’s finished, Holmes!” he roared. “And London dies first!”

And then the noxious waters behind him surged and exploded, and the next thing any of them knew, a colossal pair of jaws had snapped closed on Rohampton’s midriff. He gave a piercing shriek, which was instantly cut off as the crocodile guardian tossed itself violently over, sending a wave of slime against Holmes and Watson, and tearing and twisting its hapless catch like something made from rags.

The two men could only watch, rooted to the spot.

For what seemed like minutes, the giant, half-starved reptile rent and ripped at its prey, regardless of his shrieks and gargles, swinging him ’round and ’round, beating him on the brick walls in order to pulp and tenderize him, then tearing and chomping on him again, finally swallowing him down in quivering, butchered hunks. The waters around the animal ran deepest red; bone and gristle were swallowed in dinosaur-like gulps; clothing and shoes vanished, too; even the massive machine gun was bent and buckled in the frenzy of the attack, and almost consumed.

The echoes of the slaughter continued until long after it had finished.

When he was finally able to move, Watson drew slowly backward in shock. “Thank . . . thank God I didn’t shoot the thing . . . I suppose.”

Holmes, steely as he normally was in these circumstances, was also shaken by what they had witnessed. “Thank God indeed,” he whispered.

“Of course, you know what this means,” Watson finally added. “No one will believe us. I mean, there won’t be a scrap of the blackguard left as proof.”

Holmes nodded. “Much as I hate to say it, Watson . . . a price worth paying.”

The scaled beast had now sunk back under the stained surface, only its ridged back and beady crimson eyes visible. It watched them steadily, hungrily.