Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust Page 10

  Holmes squared his shoulders and held his head erect, chin out. “Any time you are ready,” said he. “Please, if you can, leave my brain intact. I am rather fond of it the way it is, likewise the casing that surrounds it.”

  Suddenly, swiftly, Quatermain opened fire. Shot after shot left the revolver in rapid succession, each thudding into the wall adjacent to Holmes’s head. He emptied the cylinder in under four seconds, during which time my heart skipped several beats. At any moment I expected the worst: a cry from Holmes, a spurt of blood, the sight of my friend’s body convulsing and collapsing.

  When it was finished, however, Holmes remained upright and unharmed. I think I may have glimpsed his spine sagging somewhat, as though in relief, but if so it was the tiniest of movements, barely discernible.

  “Now, look at that,” said a patently delighted Starkey. “You have grouped all five shots very closely together, just to the left of Mr Holmes. Excellent. And not a scratch on the man himself, either.”

  “I have not merely grouped them,” said Quatermain.

  “No indeed. You have made a pattern. A V-shape.”

  “To stand for ‘victory’. We have gone through with this little charade of yours, Starkey. We have done as requested. We have succeeded. I believe we are due our reward.”

  “Very much so.”

  “But,” said Holmes, “you are not going to give it to us, are you, Starkey? Not yet. There is more.”

  “You read me like a book, sir. It has been highly entertaining watching Mr Quatermain shoot, hasn’t it, lads?”

  Starkey’s thugs nodded in avid agreement.

  “It would be even more entertaining,” their leader continued, “to watch it done again, don’t you think?”

  The men lowed, cattle-like, in the affirmative.

  “Let us get our money’s worth,” said Starkey. “One further display of your prowess, if you please, Mr Quatermain. How about an ‘R’ to go with the ‘V’? Put it to the right of Mr Holmes’s head. Then we shall have a tribute to our glorious monarch – long may she reign – etched in bullet holes.”

  I objected in the strongest terms. “This is monstrous, Starkey. You have no intention of ending it there. You will have Quatermain keep at it all night, until eventually he slips up and Holmes is wounded or worse.”

  “Not at all, Doctor. This second bout will be the last, trust me.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I say I doubt it.”

  “Honestly, once I have an ‘R’ to accompany the ‘V’, my patriotic soul will be content.”

  “It is fine, Watson,” said Holmes. “Let Starkey have his fun. Quatermain will be as reliable with a second salvo as he was with the first. I am sure of it.”

  “So am I,” said Quatermain.

  “So am I,” Starkey chimed in, “which is why this time things will be a mite different. Mr Quatermain will use his left arm.”

  “What!” I expostulated. “There is a bullet deep in his biceps. He can scarcely be expected to lift the arm, let alone keep it steady.”

  “Nonetheless those are the conditions. Oh, and your gun, Doctor, seems altogether too dependable a weapon. You can have it back. Jem, would you do the honours? There. I think Mr Quatermain will be availing himself of Charlie’s pistol this time around.”

  Charlie, it transpired, was the one who had been on the point of shooting Holmes and me when Quatermain intercepted him. As he passed his firearm to Quatermain, the latter’s moue of disgust spoke volumes.

  “A Beaumont–Adams,” he said. “Could you not find something less antiquated? A blunderbuss, perhaps? It even still uses the old rimfire cap-and-ball rounds. It has not been adapted to take centrefire cartridges like most of its brethren. Nor has it been cleaned in years, to judge by the copious corrosion stains.”

  “Make do, Mr Quatermain, make do,” said Starkey.

  “I am more at risk from this gun than is Mr Holmes. There is every chance it might blow up in my face.”

  “Well, we’ll see, shan’t we?”

  Quatermain transferred the revolver to his left hand. He winced as he raised that arm. It dropped, and he raised it anew, this time hissing through his teeth. Blood dripped from his trembling hand as he curled his forefinger around the trigger.

  “Remember to ensure that the ‘R’ looks like an ‘R’,” said Starkey, sounding not unlike a schoolmaster cajoling a pupil into improving his calligraphy. “I’d hate for you to have to start over from scratch.”

  The second series of shots was far slower than the previous. In between each, Quatermain was obliged to lower the pistol and relax his arm for several seconds – to allow the pain from his biceps to subside – before elevating it again. There was a kind of horror in his expression, alongside a fierce determination.

  As the echoes of the gun reports faded away, Starkey surveyed Quatermain’s handiwork. “Oh no,” he said, lips pursed. “Dear me, no. That won’t do. That won’t do at all. Call that an ‘R’? It is barely even a ‘K’.”

  “What do you expect?” said Quatermain. “The Beaumont-Adams holds only five rounds, same as the Webley, and an ‘R’ is altogether a more complicated letter than a ‘V’.”

  “Then Charlie will reload it with another five rounds. That should enable you to fill in the gaps and complete the letter.”

  Hence the agony was prolonged – literally, in Quatermain’s case – as Holmes was obliged to act as a human target for a third time. Quatermain, again left-handed, took aim and fired. The duration of the intervals between shots lengthened exponentially. Just maintaining a grip on the pistol seemed to demand everything he had, let alone raising it aloft. Perspiration broke out upon his brow, while his lips were drawn back in a snarl of concentration.

  Still he persevered, and it was then that I felt the first stirrings of an admiration. Allan Quatermain had struck me as a throwback, someone who had turned away from the privileges and comforts of modernity in favour of a more primitive lifestyle. The wild called, and he heeded its summons and followed. His sojourns in the veldt had moulded him into a lean, brown snake of a man, content with the bare essentials, lacking in the graces. He looked civilised and was anything but.

  For all that, he possessed a grit and tenacity far exceeding the average. Not even the hardiest outdoorsman could have rivalled the resilience, both physical and mental, that he exhibited.

  Holmes must have sensed these qualities in Quatermain long before I did, else he would not have felt safe being subjected to this trial. He did not so much as flinch as the further five rounds whacked into the wall beside his head, a couple of them mere inches from his cheek.

  Once this third volley was done, Holmes turned to examine the pattern made by the bullet holes.

  “If that is not an ‘R’,” he asseverated, “I don’t know what is.”

  “Agreed,” said Starkey. He offered Quatermain a slow handclap, his men joining in. “My congratulations, sir. You have earned your liberty, and that of these others, fair and square. You too, Mr Holmes, deserve a round of applause. Such backbone. How were you not tempted at least to close your eyes?”

  “It is better to know one’s fate than blinker oneself to it.”

  “Most profound. Most profound. I shall bid you gents adieu now. This has been an enlightening and diverting evening. Lads?”

  As Starkey sauntered out of the warehouse with his retinue of thugs, I found it hard to believe that he was leaving us to our own devices like this. In the manner of a child with a toy, he had picked us up, amused himself with us, then put us back down and walked away without a second thought.

  Feeling both belittled and relieved, I bent to give Greensmith my full attention once more. The journalist was barely alive. I tapped his contusion-distended face a couple of times.

  “Stay with us, Greensmith,” I said. “Do not succumb.”

  Holmes knelt beside me, frowning in concern. “What is the prognosis?” he murmured.

  “Time is short,” I confided. “I fear there is nothi
ng to be done.”

  “Listen to me,” he said more loudly, addressing the dying man. “Focus upon my voice. You have an opportunity to file one last article, Greensmith. The scoop of a lifetime. What do you know about Inigo Niemand? Who is he really? What information did he divulge to you? Did you find out anything more about him during your enquiries in the East End?”

  Consciousness glimmered faintly in Greensmith’s features. His swollen, blood-smeared mouth moved.

  “Ffffan…” he said.

  “Fan?” said Holmes.

  “Fanthorpe.”

  “Fanthorpe? Is that Niemand’s real name? Greensmith, tell us more. Is Inigo Niemand Fanthorpe?”

  Again the mouth moved, but all that emerged was a rasping hiss.

  “Greensmith,” Holmes persisted. “Greensmith. Who is Fanthorpe?”

  “Holmes,” I said.

  “What is Fanthorpe’s connection to Niemand?”

  “Holmes,” I said again.

  “Just one moment, Watson.”

  “No, Holmes. There is no moment. He is gone. Look.”

  Greensmith lay motionless upon the warehouse floor. His chest betrayed not the slightest rise and fall. Soul had fled body, forsaking that deep dark valley of pain for, I hoped, a sunnier, happier clime.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  GONE TO GROUND

  “Dash it all!” Holmes exclaimed hotly. “A lead, lost.”

  “And a man’s life,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, yes. That too. If only Greensmith had given us more than a mere name before he perished.”

  With an intemperate curse, my friend straightened up. His eye fell briefly upon the “V.R.” which Quatermain had drilled into the wall. Anyone who has read my tale “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” will know that Holmes himself later inscribed the same two letters, using the same medium, in the wall of our sitting-room while indulging in one of his queer humours. The forebear of that act of patriotic vandalism, an acknowledgement of his esteem for our nation’s beloved Victoria Regina, may be found here in these very pages; but perhaps, too, Holmes pocked the sitting-room wall with Boxer rounds in such a formulation as a tribute to his own mettle in the face of a considerable ordeal. Should his courage ever falter, that “V.R.” at Baker Street was a permanent reminder of the heights to which it might soar.

  “Quatermain,” he said, casting his gaze about. “Where is Quatermain?”

  While Holmes and I had been busy with Greensmith, it seemed Quatermain had taken advantage of our preoccupation and quietly absconded.

  “I am not letting him get away from me!” Holmes declared. “Not again!”

  “But how, after our lack of success when tailing him last time, can we hope to do better this time?” I said.

  “Easily. This time he has left a trail even a blind man could follow. Behold.”

  Droplets of blood were visible upon the floorboards, leading out of the warehouse. Holmes snatched up one of the lanterns, and the chase was on.

  The trail was not perhaps as manifestly obvious as Holmes had stated. Indeed, on a number of occasions it seemed as though we had lost it. However, after some searching about, my friend would turn up a fresh patch of spilled blood upon a pavement corner or upon some railings and our mission would resume. Throughout, his eyes never lost their steely glitter, nor did the taut sinews in his thin neck slacken. For those who think of Sherlock Holmes solely as the cerebral sage of Baker Street, sunk in sedentary, brooding deliberation upon a problem, I present an image of him as a darting, questing figure on an errand of pure physicality, dependent upon the keenness of his senses alone.

  We wound our way through darkened East London until we ended up in Victoria Park.

  “Quatermain has led us a merry dance again, it seems,” I said, “just as he did at Regent’s Park.”

  “I beg to differ,” said Holmes. “I think he is in too much pain and has lost too much blood to act with such a level of cunning. By the same token, if he were intending to cover his tracks he would have stemmed the blood flow by now. What this is, Watson, is desperation. This is an injured beast going to ground.”

  “But where?”

  “We shall learn that soon enough.”

  The blood trail led us to a cluster of trees that stood footed in dense shrubbery. The leaves of the bushes formed a seemingly impenetrable thicket to a height of some ten feet. Holmes signalled that we should advance with caution. It struck me as absurd that Quatermain might be hiding within the thicket; yet, knowing what I did of the man, it did not seem beyond the bounds of possibility either.

  Holmes was almost at the thicket when, from amongst the leaves, an iron blade abruptly protruded. It was large and wedge-shaped, and its cutting edge halted mere inches from Holmes’s nose.

  As Holmes reared back, so more of the blade emerged. It remained within close proximity of his face, changing angle to match his movements. When he bent left, the blade followed; right, likewise. Visible now was the thick wooden shaft to which it was attached, and I perceived that the whole thing constituted a battle-axe of some sort.

  “Quatermain,” said Holmes, “there is no need for such a show of intimidation. It is only I, Sherlock Holmes.”

  The unseen wielder of the axe said nothing.

  “We have come to help,” I said. “You have a bullet in you. It must be removed. I can perform the surgery if you let me.”

  Again, answer came there none from the dark depths of the thicket. The axe, however, gave a quiver, as though it were a living thing registering surprise.

  “You shall not get a better offer than that, Quatermain,” said Holmes. “Watson’s skills as a battlefield surgeon are without compare.” My friend had no first-hand evidence to back up this assertion, but I appreciated the remark nonetheless and hoped that Quatermain would too.

  The axe now wavered and drooped somewhat.

  “Will you allow us in?” Holmes said. “You know that we are not your foe. Our encounter with Starkey has proven that, if nothing else. We are on the same side.”

  Moments passed, and then the axe was retracted, withdrawing into the thicket like the stinger of a wasp returning to its sheath in the insect’s abdomen.

  Then, shortly after that, a hand parted the leaves of the bushes not far along from where we stood.

  “This way,” said a voice.

  Neither voice nor hand belonged to Quatermain. The former was deeper than his and bore a thick accent, while the latter was notably darker in complexion and equipped with gaunt fingers that ended in broad, spatulate tips.

  The owner of both proved to be a large African man of venerable age, sporting a high, noble brow and sharp brown eyes that glittered in a lively fashion in the lantern light. Flecks of white salted the black of his scrubby beard and close-cropped hair, and I observed that there was a deep triangular depression in his forehead, the imprint of some old, imperfectly healed wound. He wore a collarless shirt and a pair of baggy flannel trousers, neither of which appeared to have been tailored for him but rather must have been begged or borrowed. His hand grasped the rugged handle of the axe, which, in its entirety, was a truly fearsome-looking implement.

  “You say you are friends of Macumazahn?” The African pronounced Quatermain’s Zulu name peculiarly, accompanying the “c” with a click in the back of his throat that sounded like a drop of water falling into a subterranean pool.

  “I might not go that far,” said Holmes, “but we are certainly not hostile to his interests.”

  “He has lately mentioned a Mr Sherlock Holmes. He has been none too complimentary, but I have sensed a portion of respect all the same. Come further in. He is here.”

  The African ushered us into the heart of the thicket, axe still in hand. We went as he did, crawling on hands and knees through a low tunnel that snaked between trunks and boughs. It disgorged onto a small clearing whose area could not have been more than a dozen square yards in total.

  There, a crude camp had been made. A rectangle of
tarpaulin was stretched over the top to keep out the worst of the elements, while bedrolls were laid across the bare earth floor. Some basic cooking and eating utensils and a couple of rifles were the sole other accoutrements.

  Upon one of the bedrolls lay Quatermain, on his back. He was sound asleep, but not at peace. His body spasmed and jerked and his face was glazed with sweat, as though he was in the grip of a fever. A bandage had been applied to his arm but it was a dressing of the most rudimentary sort, just a torn strip of cloth, and blood from the bullet wound had soaked it to saturation.

  “I have done what I can for him,” said the African, “but I am no doctor and I have no medicines. If you truly can bring him succour, I beseech you to do so.”

  I knelt by Quatermain and felt his brow. It was hot.

  “Did he pass out when he got here?” I asked.

  “No, but he was weak and in much pain. He desired the oblivion of Taduki, so that he might rest.”

  “Taduki?”

  “The drug,” said Holmes. “Remember, Watson? The tobacco-like herb about which Quatermain told us. The one which induces ‘such strange, entrancing visions’.”

  “I helped him partake of it.” The African gestured at a pipe which lay by Quatermain’s side, the same calabash he had smoked at Baker Street.

  “Sleep cannot extract a bullet,” I said, “nor stave off infection. Listen, my good man…” I realised I needed to know the African’s name. I could not keep addressing him as “my good man” if I were to have his cooperation when tending to Quatermain. “What may I call you?”

  “Umslopogaas,” said he. “You stand face to face with Umslopogaas, of the blood of Chaka, of the people of the Amazulu, a captain in the regiment of the Nkomabakosi, and long-time comrade of Macumazahn, he who is the slayer of elephants, eater up of lions, clever one, watchful one, brave one, quick one, whose shot never misses, who strikes straight home, who grasps a hand and holds it to the death as a true friend should. And what may I call you, koos?”

  I took it that “koos” was a term of endearment or deference. “Watson,” I said.