Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire Part 11

'I confess that the experience is a novel and unexpected one.' Holmes voice was flattened by the padding. 'Still, look on it as a part of life's rich tapestry.,'

'Thank you,' I retorted. 'I'll remember that.'

We seemed to roll forward by a few feet, and a heavy thud behind us suggested that the hatch had been closed.

'I seem to remember reading about something like this in a Jules Verne book,' I said lightly, trying to keep my spirits up.

'Verne got it all wrong,' Holmes said in a level voice. 'At the pressures generated in his manned rocket sh.e.l.l, the occupants would have been squashed into raspberry preserve with a fraction of a second.'

There was a definite pressure building up in my ears. I swallowed. The pressure eased, only to mount a few seconds later.

'Very rea.s.suring,' I gasped. 'Any last words?'

'The world has not seen the last of Sherlock Holmes,' my friend said. I wasn't sure if it was a threat or a promise.

There was a loud thud behind us and the vehicle rocked on its wheels. The armchair felt as if it was being pushed hard against my back. Something roared loudly in the background and the vehicle shook as if some unseen creature were caressing it with rough hands. The temperature rose suddenly, bringing a fine dew of perspiration to my brow. My fingers clutched at the arms of the chair and my head was forced back against the padding, making me think, for some obscure -reason, of a dentist's surgery.

I clenched my neck muscles and tried to force my head forward. It was hard. I felt as if Mycroft Holmes were sitting on my chest. I strained harder.

Suddenly the weight vanished from my chest. I catapulted forward, banging my nose against the back of Holmes's chair. Stars exploded in the pitch darkness. The beast outside was roaring louder now, and I had to brace myself against the sides of the vessel to stop myself sliding off the velvet upholstery. Then we were slowing down, and the tone of the roar changed.

Within seconds we were stationary and the hinged lid was being pulled open from outside.

'Ere ya go, mate.'

A tattooed arm reached in and hauled me like a kitten into a room that was the twin of the one we had left. Holmes waved away the man with the tattoos, and clambered out under his own steam. I looked at him and laughed.

'If you find the experience so amusing,' he snapped, 'perhaps you would like to make the return journey.'

I suppressed my laughter. Part of it was sheer hysteria, but a large portion was due to the velvet weave pattern embossed across Holmes's forehead.

I hadn't been alone in hitting my head.

We staggered out into Drummond Crescent and found ourselves outside a small, anonymous house. We looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

'Quicker than a cab,' I gasped, 'and so much cheaper!'

'Gad, I've a small place a few hundred yards away where I keep make-up and disguises,' he said between huge choking guffaws. 'And to think, I never knew...'

We were still laughing when a black hansom cab trotted past us. Holmes sprinted after it and I, because of the wound I had sustained in Afghanistan, followed as best I could. The hansom rounded the corner and, shortly afterwards, so did Holmes. By the time I reached the corner the hansom was stationary and the door to a small terraced house was swinging shut half-way down the street.

Holmes had taken off his top hat and flung it to the pavement.

'd.a.m.n and blast!' he shouted as I approached. 'd.a.m.n and blast! I could not make out his face. Too late, by a few seconds.'

He walked along to where the carriage stood and looked up at the closed door. I joined him, mindful of the hulking figure of the driver atop the carriage.

'I know that address,' Holmes said. His lips moved as he tried to recollect the memory, then a slow smile spread across his face.

'We may be in luck after all, Watson. Follow me.'

With that he bounded up the stairs to the front door of the house.

'But Holmes . . . Good Lord, you can't just barge in there, man!'

'Why not?' he shouted down as he rang the bell. The door swung open just as I joined him, revealing a rather seedy-looking footman whose hair was slicked down and who grinned at us in a most familiar way. I had been about to apologize for Holmes's behaviour but, after a short exchange of words, he walked in as if he owned the place. I followed, confused.

The walls of the hall were papered in a red flock design that showed patches of wear. The carpet had once been opulent, but now looked threadbare and out of fas.h.i.+on. There was no sign of Maupertuis and his companion, if, indeed, this was the house they had entered. A stairway led upstairs. Through a connecting door I could see a large drawing room whose walls were thankfully half-hidden by drapes. I say 'thankfully' as there were children lounging on sofas, and the murals which had been painted on the walls were of fauns and satyrs in positions of amorous entanglements with partially clad nymphs of a shockingly young age. I am no prude - my experience of women covers many nations and three separate continents - but I was appalled by the almost medical explicitness with which those paintings were rendered.

And then I looked at the children.

Most were girls, although three or four angelic boys fluttered long lashes at me. They were lolling around in postures of provocative abandon, dressed in short frocks. Very short frocks and nothing else.

I began to feel sick.

'Does anything take your fancy?' said a voice behind me. I turned. Behind me stood a woman of uncertain years wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made out of the same threadbare fabric as the flock wallpaper in the hall. She was short and wide, and her mouth was a rouged slash across her face.

'We've got some loverly little ones here, gentlemen, and clean too, if you take my meaning. Whatever your tastes, we can satisfy them. Blondes or redheads, bold or shy. If you want them fresh, well, that comes a little extra, gents, but fresh you can have.'

She gazed up at us with bulging, frog-like eyes. I wanted to lash out at her with my stick, but remnants of gentility and Holmes's presence by my side made me stay my hand.

'Thank you,' he said. He had roughened his voice and, looking at him from the corner of my eye, I could see that he was holding himself differently, disguising his height and suggesting some congenital deformity of the spine. 'Perhaps we could take some time in choosing.'

She winked at him.

'Certainly, sir. I can see that you're a connersewer, a proper connersewer.

Take your time. Talk to 'em, if you like. Give us a call when you're ready, and I'll have a room put at your disposal.'

She retreated back to whatever rock she had crawled out from under. I thought I heard her say, 'Take two or three, if you want, it's all the same to them, and you looks like you can afford it,' but the buzzing in my ears made it difficult to tell.

'Bear up, man,' Holmes's voice whispered beside me. 'Smile, and when I say the word, make for the stairs.'

I glanced again into the room. One of the boys winked at me and licked his lips. I shuddered.

On Holmes's command we moved back into the hall. As we rounded the bannister Holmes reached out and opened the door slightly, then slammed it shut.

'With luck they'll think our courage deserted us,' he said grimly. 'That harpy could tell from your face that you were discomfited.'

'Discomfited!' I hissed. 'Holmes, do you have any idea . . .?'

'More than you, old friend,' he said as we reached the first landing. 'The underside of London is my natural habitat. I have been able to keep most of it from you. I'm only sorry you had to be here now.'

'But Holmes, they were children!'

He scanned the carpet and sniffed the air like an experienced hunter in search of big game, then started up the next flight of stairs.

'The other side of the coin to our experiences in Holborn,' he whispered.

'The overcrowding in the slums and rookeries is so intense, the poverty so appalling, that many families feel they have no option but to sell their children into what may seem to them to be better circ.u.mstances.'

'And there are men willing to . . . to pay money for . . . And with boys as well . . .!'

I could not continue. Holmes glanced over at me, his eyes shadowed.

'I have never been one to censure what two consenting adults wish to do in private, Watson, the provisions of Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill notwithstanding. But to involve children is the lowest form of moral perversion imaginable.'

We had reached the second landing by now. The dubious trappings of respectability had faded: the walls were distempered rather than papered, the floor uncarpeted. Holmes repeated his s.h.i.+kari act, then led the way to a closed door which he opened a crack. Behind it a smaller staircase led further upward. From upstairs I thought I could hear chanting: voices raised in a deep, slow song whose words appeared to be in some foreign language. Closing the door again, Holmes whispered, 'I can hear Maupertuis at the top of the stairs. He appears to be standing guard over a room, inside which I presume is his hooded companion. We must determine what he is doing in there.'

'But Holmes, surely it's obvious.'

He gazed at me pityingly.

'This address was familiar to me not because I am an expert in brothels but because Madame Sosostris, the infamous clairvoyant, holds her devilish seances here.'

'Wasn't she mixed up in black ma.s.s ceremonies a few years back? I remember reading it in the newspapers. Shocking.'

'Indeed, and this is where she ended up, attempting to contact the other side by using devils and demons, rather than the Red Indian spirit guides so beloved of other clairvoyants. I would give a great deal to know what this hooded man wants with her.' A thought struck him. 'Perhaps we can gain access from this floor.'

Holmes and I checked the nearest door. Hearing nothing, I cautiously turned the handle and opened the door a crack. The room was dark. I pushed the door a few more inches and poked my head cautiously around the edge. Apart from a stained and rumpled bed and a small plaster crucifix on the wall above it, there was nothing. The curtains had been drawn, and the room was in twilight.

Holmes went straight to the window and drew back the curtains. Beyond the fly-specked gla.s.s I could see a patch of overgrown garden bordered by chest-high walls. As I retrieved my stethoscope from my hat, Holmes threw up the window, secure in the knowledge that he could not be observed, and began to climb out onto the ledge.

'Be careful!' I mouthed. He nodded, and swung himself sideways, feeling with his fingers and toes for the gaps between the bricks.

I was just about to turn back to the room when something-familiar caught my eye in the garden, half hidden by the shadow cast by one of the walls. It was a pile of tall, thin twigs with a leather pouch, like a half-deflated football, balanced on top. I tried to remember where I had seen something similar, but my mind would not cooperate.

'Watson,' Holmes hissed from his position above me, 'stop wool-gathering and see what you can hear through the ceiling!'

Chastened, I gazed upwards. All I could see were the soles of his feet. I scurried back and placed my stethoscope against the ceiling.

There were two voices upstairs. One seemed to belong to an older man, and was oddly familiar. The second was that of an old woman. Together they seemed to be chanting a series of polysyllabic words in a regular and detached manner, like children reciting nursery rhymes.

'I-ay, I-ay,' the sound seemed to go, 'naghaa, naghaighai! Shoggog fathaghn! I-ay, I-ay tsa toggua tholoya! Tholoya fathaghn!'

I looked over towards the window, suppressing a shudder. There was no sign of Holmes. I felt a moment of panic, but decided in the end that if he had fallen he would have made some noise, if only to warn me.

The two voices were chanting out of phase now. They seemed still to be using the same words, but the elder man's voice was two syllables ahead of the woman's. The effect was oddly hypnotic. The curious stresses within the words made the chant resonate with a strong beat as the voices alternately reinforced and competed with each other. I had heard much the same effect in Afghanistan and India, listening to the music of the native tribesmen of the hills, music based not upon the melodic structure so dear to Holmes's heart, but upon a rhythmic foundation not heard in the West.

The chant stopped abruptly in the middle of a phrase. For a moment I thought that Holmes had been discovered, until a third voice spoke. It was high-pitched and pure, without character or personality. It oozed sweetness. I had never heard anything like it in my life.

'My children,' it said, 'you have done well. I am pleased.'

The man spoke again, but in English.

'When shall we bask again in your presence?' he asked fawningly.

'Soon, very soon,' the outlandish voice answered. Despite its peculiarities, I could make out its meaning.

'The armies are gathered,' the man said. Presumably he was well used to the owner of the strange accent.

'You must see to it yourself. The brethren will be committed to moving me soon.'

'I would crave a request, oh luminous one.'

'Name it. You are my favoured son.'

'There is interference here. I would ask that a few of the brethren are spared to protect this side of the gateway.'

'Interference? You displease me. The guards are mobilizing. Soon they may realize our plans. I am loathe to spare any of the brethren.'

'A detective and a stranger called the Doctor are investigating our affairs.

They are nothing, but I would not take chances with your safety at stake.'

There seemed to be a slight quickening of interest in the voice.

'Nothing can threaten my safety, but this Doctor may pose problems. You may have four of the brethren. They will be waiting this side of the gateway.

There was a sudden scrabble outside the window, and the sound of rubble hitting stone far below. In the moment before I tore my stethoscope away from the ceiling a silence fell across the meeting, broken by the woman's voice asking, 'What was that?'

'Some jackanapes is outside the window!' the elder man snapped. 'The connection is broken! Maupertuis! d.a.m.n you, man, attend me!'

As the door to the room above was thrown open by, I presumed, Baron Maupertuis, I rushed across and peered out of the window. There was no sign of Holmes down below.

'Watson!'

An urgent hiss attracted my attention upwards. Holmes was moving rapidly down towards me. Beyond him I could see that the lintel beneath the window must have crumbled under his fingers, sending fragments of masonry cras.h.i.+ng to the ground.

'd.a.m.n it,' Holmes exclaimed as I pulled him in. 'All that and I hardly got a glimpse. Maupertuis was outside guarding the door, that much is for sure.

There were only the two of them in the room, and the robed man had his back to me.'

'Only two of them? But I heard three voices!'

'I know,' Holmes barked as he flung open the door.

We emerged onto the landing at the same time that Baron Maupertuis arrived from the stairway. He was holding something in his hand. No flicker of expression crossed his face as he saw us. Madame Sosostris - a sour-faced woman in faded finery - cowered behind him. There was no sign of the hooded man.

'Surd!' yelled the Baron.

Holmes took two steps towards Maupertuis and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h whatever it was that he was holding. They struggled silently for a few moments whilst the woman gazed at me with horrified eyes: horrified not by what was going on, but by something else that she had seen. I was trying to decide whether to join in the struggle or make for the stairs when a grotesque figure rushed up from the floor below. He was at least seven feet tall, and wide to match.

His physique was that of a prize-fighter, but it was his face that held me in thrall. Crowned by a rough thatch of black hair, it was scarred and swollen, and pulled into a grotesque expression by what seemed to be all of the many muscles of his lips and cheeks pulling in different directions. I recognized his garb: he was the driver of Maupertuis's carriage.

Holmes broke off the struggle and ran to join me.