The Holmes-Dracula File d-2 Read online

  Soon we could observe a cheerful stir among some men who had gathered near a rear entrance to the parlor. This was occasioned by the appearance of the evening's intended victims. Rats were being carried in, in crates and bags, by the score and by the hundred, to a total that must easily have surpassed a thousand, and the room seemed to fill with their sharp, musky smell. From the entry they were borne across the rear of the parlor, and up a broad stair there. Ample light shone down from a large room or loft above, which seemed to be the scene of the planned entertainment.

  Most of the workers engaged in bringing in the rats were young men, and it may have been for this reason that my eye first singled out one older man among them. This was a tall, lean fellow who had a crate upon his shoulder when I first saw him, so that his face was, for the moment, entirely hidden from me; but it was obvious from the long, graying hair that hung uncovered about his ears that he was no longer young. This individual was just starting briskly upstairs with his burden, when my attention was drawn from him suddenly by the reopening of the door of Barley's private office behind the bar. The proprietor himself emerged, leaving the door ajar; but my eager glance toward the room's interior was not as rewarding as I had hoped. I could see part of a desk, a table with a lamp, and three or four battered chairs. In one of these slouched a villainous-looking individual, a complete stranger to me, but who, by reason of his dark hair and hooked nose, could not possibly be the man we sought. The remaining occupant of the room was visible only in the form of a pair of dark-trousered legs, one foot crossed over the other in stylish black boots.

  Barley, on coming out into the public room, at once raised his arms and called out in his loud, jovial voice that it was time for the company to move upstairs. Having made this announcement, he retired again into his private chamber and shut the door.

  His words brought on a general push in the direction of the stair. Moore and I looked at each other again, and I have no doubt that the disappointment I observed in his face was mirrored in my own.

  Yet there was nothing to be gained by losing heart and hope. Barley and the men in the office with him must eventually emerge. Meanwhile, however, if Moore and I were to continue to be inconspicuous, we must go with the crowd. To Murray, who had remained nearby, I imparted this decision with a look and a slight gesture, and by the same means instructed him to remain on watch on the ground floor. With quick intelligence he took my meaning at once.

  Then, in the midst of a cheerful throng of men of every class, some carrying dogs, many already wagering for or against particular animals, Moore and I went on up. The room or loft to which we ascended was only a little smaller than that below, and very high, having no ceiling other than the beams of the sloping roof. Despite its spaciousness the air was close; from the crates and bags of rats came an exhalation like that of an open sewer, to mingle with the fumes of tobacco, gin, and beer.

  A pit some seven or eight feet square had been constructed in the middle of the floor, by the erection of a thin screen or barrier all round, some two or three feet high, enough to prevent the game from escaping. Ranks of benches, those in the rear somewhat elevated, surrounded the pit, and in it stood a young man with metal clips holding his trousers-legs tight about his ankles, evidently to forestall any desperate rat's effort to seek shelter by that route.

  This referee soon called for the first dog scheduled to take part in the evening's competition; its handlers brought it forward, a hundred voices were raised in raucous cries of encouragement or mockery, the wagering became fast and furious, and the sport—if indeed it should be honored with that name—commenced.

  It is not my intention to relate in any detail the events taking place in the pit, where time was kept as at a boxing match. Dog succeeded dog, and the total of slain rats mounted rapidly into—the hundreds. I recall noticing that Lord Godalming's first terrier did not do well, as one of the intended victims—which were in general remarkable for their apparent helplessness—turned on it and sank sharp teeth into its muzzle. Dr. Seward and its owner withdrew the yelping animal and carried it a little away from the mass of the crowd, endeavoring to do something for its wound.

  In my continual scanning of the crowd for any man closely resembling the photograph I had seen of John Scott, I noticed for the second time the tall, ragged rat-carrier. Having evidently completed the labors for which he had been hired, he chose to take no further active part in the proceedings, but sat perched upon a high stool at some little distance from the pit, brooding over the scene and observing with what seemed equal contempt the squealing, growling, panting, bloodied animals and the scarcely less frenzied humans. His wild, graying hair shaded much of his face save for the aquiline nose, and his right hand, propping his head in an attitude of thought, hid much of his mouth and jaw. His countenance was thus suggested to my eyes rather than seen, but I remember that the impression created in my mind by this glimpse was of a visage and a character ravaged and evil, which yet still retained ineradicable evidence of once-great nobility.

  Before my attention could become fully focused upon this man, it was drawn away by Peter Moore's touching my arm. We had both declined to join in the rush for seats on the worn benches, and were standing, with others, not far from the head of the stair. This position had the distinct advantage that from it we could look down into the parlor, which was now almost deserted. Near the bottom of the stair young Murray was now standing, looking up, and his eyebrows were excitedly attempting to convey some message to me.

  In a moment I understood. Walking toward the foot of the stair from the direction of the bar came Barley and his two confidants; the one who earlier had been visible to me only as trouser-legs and boots was now revealed as a thin young man with a heavy blond mustache.

  My eyes of course were fixed at once upon this latter individual, and sought out the tell-tale bulge on the right side of his top hat where a doctor's stethoscope is customarily carried: I rejoiced that during my years of association with Sherlock Holmes I had not failed utterly to develop my powers of observation.

  Peter Moore at the same time was leaning close to whisper to me: "That is not John, though there's a strong resemblance." A few seconds, and the three men had ascended the stairs, keeping up a good-humored, low-voiced conversation among themselves meanwhile. Together they passed almost within arm's length of where we stood. The eyes of the villainous-looking one brushed mine; even in this crowd where ruffians were more the rule than the exception, he stood out unpleasantly. His gnarled, wizened frame spoke of advancing age, an impression deepened rather than relieved by his crudely dark-dyed hair. His wrinkled face had an unhealthy, dissipated aspect; but still the firm energy with which he trod the stairs showed him to be not yet decrepit.

  The bogus "Scott" almost brushed our sleeves in passing, and I saw him glance at Peter Moore without a trace of recognition. I was just turning over in my mind the rather useless thought that now we wanted Superintendent Marlowe or one of his warehouse clerks to identify the imposter for us, and pondering what we should do without such help, when a disturbance broke out downstairs near the front door. Voices were raised, at first not very loudly but still with an extraordinary tension in them that demanded notice. Murray was signaling again from down below, but in this instance I did not grasp at once the import of his rapid, urgent signs.

  Peter Moore was reacting no more rapidly than I, and before either of us had fully grasped the nature of the disturbance, every scoundrel in the throng about us was fully aware of it, and all of them were struggling to reach an exit and escape. The fact was that the uproar in the parlor below had been caused by the entry of a large force of the police.

  As I have already remarked, rat-killing was not at that time illegal. Yet it was not unknown for the promoters of these entertainments to add to the bill such contests as badger-baiting, which were already under the prohibition of the law. In such a case those betting on the sport as well as those conducting it would be liable to be charged. Though I had s
een no badgers or other animals besides the dogs and luckless rats on Barley's premises, some of the men present must have feared there were, and that they stood in danger of involvement with the wrong end of the law.

  Another substantial number must, indeed, have belonged to that class who flee when no man pursueth. The thought that appeared uppermost in nearly every mind was that of escape. A chair was thrown, breaking a window out—but even as I turned at the noise, the head and shoulders of a helmeted policeman appeared framed in the jagged opening. The first-floor exits as well as those on the ground floor had evidently been blocked by Scotland Yard.

  Emerging from the melee at the head of the stairs I spied the tall figure of Tobias Gregson. It was only a glimpse I had of Gregson, for my eyes were needed elsewhere. The bogus "Scott," if the man we had spotted was indeed the impostor, was still in my view, and I had no intention of allowing him to escape before he could be questioned.

  Peter Moore shared my thought, and side by side we flung ourselves into the pursuit. Though we both put forth our best efforts, however, such was the press of bodies all struggling at cross-purposes that we could make no headway.

  We were still near enough to the stair, so that when a woman's scream sounded from that direction and I turned, I could see that it was Sarah Tarlton. She had evidently been foolish or impatient enough to enter the building after all, and was now caught on the stair, between some burly policemen trying to climb, and other men who were attempting to get down. These last were pushed on by still others, behind them, who endeavored to escape. I tried at once to go to her assistance, but soon discovered that whether I strove to move in that direction or the opposite one made very little difference in my actual position.

  The entire establishment was by this time in a perfect uproar. As I was spun round almost helplessly in a surging of the crowd, I caught sight once more of the imitation "Scott." He had been one of the first to take alarm, and was now apparently well on the way to making his escape. He had somehow managed to catch hold of one of the overhead beams, which extended completely across the loft some nine or ten feet above the floor, and was in the act of pulling himself up to a standing position on it. Above and beyond him in the shadows, I could see what appeared to be a closed trapdoor or sealed window set in the angle of the roof.

  At the next moment I again spied the gray-haired purveyor of rats, just as he leaped with an incredible agility to catch hold of the same beam upon which our quarry balanced. But the ragged, hatless man was prevented from going on by an athletic constable who jumped upward from a chair to catch him by one leg.

  The rat-carrier's face was now turned to the full light of a gas fixture on the wall, and what I saw in that face compelled me instantly to forget all else. A great understanding—as it then seemed—burst upon my brain. An instant later I was hurling men from my path, fighting to reach his side.

  But before I could achieve this, a powerful double kick from the dangling man's lean legs sent the body of the athletic constable flying like an acrobat's above the melee. Several men went down beneath the uniformed figure. Once more the ragged man pulled himself up, and once more a policeman would have seized his legs to drag him down; but I was just in time to collar this second officer and pull him, instead, back into the crush. When I let go, the policeman of course glared about, but in the confusion and the press of bodies he was unable to tell who had just foiled him in what he conceived to be the performance of his duty.

  When I looked up again, "Scott" had already disappeared—and the ragged man, looking as weightless as a fly, was clambering rapidly toward the closed trapdoor.

  Moore had now seized me by the arm, and was shouting as he tugged at me. Following with my eyes the direction of. his pointing finger, I could see the villainous-looking fellow who had been with "Scott" and Barley embarking upon a more orthodox climb of his own. He had reached a wooden ladder crudely built against one wall, which evidently furnished the normal means of ascent to the trapdoor and the roof, and around which a throng of men still struggled for the chance to get away.

  The crush in general was now thinning out, and the noise diminishing, as men either made good their escapes or, more frequently, fell quiet in the hands of the police. "Dr. Watson!" It was Tobias Gregson at my side. "Is Mr. Holmes here too?"

  "No longer," I choked out, meanwhile glancing upward, to where the trap opening now yawned black and empty against the night. "Come this way, and quickly! There is a man who must not escape."

  Gregson, shouting to one of his men to join us, came with Moore and me in a rush. Together we made short work of getting through the group of men who were still struggling around the ladder for a chance to climb. Our latest quarry was himself just on the point of being able to get up and away, but, seizing his feet, we dragged him down by main force, despite his desperate struggles to avoid capture.

  Gregson and Moore pinioned his arms, and I drew my pistol and presented it to his head, at which point he ceased to struggle.

  "Got you, my beauty!" Gregson shouted. "Now where is Dr. John Scott?" And at the same instant I was demanding of the prisoner: "What is your name?"

  The wiry form we had surrounded slumped in resignation. "As to Dr. Scott's whereabouts," came the dry answer, "I fear I have been prevented from gaining any useful information. You will oblige me greatly, Watson, by putting up your pistol; my name is Sherlock Holmes."

  Chapter Eleven

  In his good journeyman style—if not in what I should count as sparkling prose—the late Dr. Watson has provided a substantially correct account of the affair at Barley's upon that long-ago June night. Still there are, to my mind, one or two points where the reader may benefit from a change of viewpoint and a small amount of overlap. Therefore I resume my history at approximately the moment when the police pushed open Barley's front door.

  Of course I might have heard them coming from afar, had my attention not been riveted upon that same small private office into which Watson and Moore had been so clumsily attempting to spy. As Watson has noted, my duties as rat-factor had brought me upstairs; but, at the risk of seeming boastful or tedious, let me reiterate for the last time that my hearing is far keener than that of almost any breathing human; so keen that, had the animals and enthusiasts about me been less noisy over their blood sports, I would have had a good chance of understanding almost all that Barley and the other two were saying down in the office, though their voices were quite low.

  Their talk was on a subject that lately had begun to grow in fascination for me—rats. One participant of course was Barley—the booming rumble of his voice was unmistakable, however he tried to mute it. The second voice I did not recognize; but the third was indubitably that of my old acquaintance, the still-nameless doctor. I heard it with a throbbing in the needle-marks that scarred my arms—yes, metal can sometimes wound and torture even those it cannot kill.

  Regrettably, the hubbub of slaughtered rodents and wounded dogs, and the scarcely more human sounds emitted by the men who watched and wagered, prevented my hearing more than scraps of that distant conversation. And what I could hear of it was damnably oblique and fragmentary, as conversations are wont to be when the subject is a familiar one to all participants and they are arguing technical details. About all I could learn was that the doctor was out to buy several thousand rats as quickly as he could. I thought he expressed some preference for Rattus rattus; and it seemed that Barley and the other man were going to act somehow as brokers.

  This was not much learned, yet was I content with my situation. I had determined that when my erstwhile oppressor left Barley's, as sooner or later he must, I should not be far behind him; that I should then take the first opportunity to find a place where we would not be interrupted, and speak with him alone; and that in the course of this tjte-`-tjte he would recite to me in a loud, clear voice the names, descriptions, and probable locations of each and every one of his associates in the damnable and mysterious scheme wherein my kidnapping and death were to
have been the merest incidents.

  The three of course left their real business in the little office, and when they emerged were talking loudly and cheerily about some famed bitch rat-slayer of a past decade. Looking up as he began to climb the stairs, the doctor brushed with his eyes my figure on the high stool, but there was not the faintest hint of recognition in his glance. His mind was no doubt full of things he counted as more important than one dead—as he supposed—old man, however strange. He must have known by then of Frau Grafenstein's demise—the papers had begun to carry the story—but I suppose that like the police he chalked it up to the enterprise of some stray madman, and did not connect it at all with her own efforts in the field of health care. It may have been that any chagrin he felt at the loss of a key employee was offset by relief at the removal of a budding rival. The three men were just starting up the stair, when the figure of a girl separated itself from a small group near the front of the parlor and came hurrying after them, with the half-furtive manner of someone trying to impart private information. She did not look up in my direction, but I was surprised to recognize the lithe form and scarred face of Sally.

  One glance back over her shoulder as the front door came pushing open, and she realized that she was not going to have the time to keep her warning private—she drew in a good breath, and broadcast to the entire establishment the word she had been trying to save for her employer's ears alone: "Peelers!"

  In the next instant her shout was echoed by a score of others. A window crashed, and all was pandemonium, which the good Doctor has already described, although it caught him rather flat-footed when it came.

  Whatever the reason for this official exercise by the police, I did not purpose to play a part in it. No more did my enemy the nameless doctor. With a reaction if anything more decisive than my own, he sprang upstairs past Barley—who was stunned to absolute immobility—and had sprinted almost the entire length of the upper room before most of the people in it were aware that anything out of the ordinary was going on. Then from a high bench my foe leaped nimbly for the rafters, into which he swarmed as agile as a sailor.