Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

HOLMES

Mitchell ran straight towards his laboratory and I could only assume he had something in there he considered potent enough to help him regain the upper hand. I therefore felt it best to follow.

He struggled with the keys as the explosions rang out throughout the warehouse, but wrestled the door open and dashed inside.

I noticed Kane appear at the end of the hallway. I really didn’t have the enthusiasm to be able to deal with both of them. Isn’t it precisely for situations like this that you come in company?

“Gun!” Watson shouted and I took great pleasure in throwing it to him as I continued in my pursuit of Mitchell. Behind me I was aware of the collapse of part of the ceiling and wall, hardly surprising given the age of the building. I’d placed the majority of it at close to a hundred-and-twenty years old, though some of the bricks had dated from as far back as 1763. Given the temperature of the last few winters and the fact that the place had not been looked after for some years, it must have been fragile indeed. I wasn’t aware that part of it had fallen on Watson. After all, I can hardly be expected to notice everything.

“Come now, Mitchell,” I said, stepping into the doorway of his laboratory. “There’s no earthly use in running, we have reinforcements on the way.”

“Who says I’m running?” he replied, grabbing a hypodermic syringe.

“This is a concentrated dose of my serum,” he explained, rolling up his sleeve, “a chemical capable of turning me into a creature far more powerful than the rest of your pathetic species.”

“Up until it kills you,” I reminded him.

“Not me,” he insisted, plunging the needle into his arm, “I’m too strong, I will develop! I will evolve!” He began to swell, his skin reddening. It was almost as if his madness was taking on physical shape, turning him into a flesh and bone illustration of his own anger and violence. The pig cowl stretched and distorted as his head continue to expand beneath it. The veins were rising on his forearms, blue lines as thick and jumbled as a map of the Underground trains.

“Evolve!!!” it shouted, the voice even more slurred than normal.

I glanced at the door and noticed he had left the keys in the lock. Evolution will never be a replacement for intelligence.

“Evolve your way out of a locked room then,” I suggested, stepping outside and locking the door behind me.

He immediately began pounding on it as I walked away but to no avail; it was a stout door. I joined Mann and Challenger in front of the pile of bricks and mortar that had once been the floor above.

“Watson was caught in it,” said Challenger. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I replied, filling my pipe, “my Watson’s a damn sight harder to kill than that.”