“Hold your fire!” I shouted. There was no need to waste further ammunition, my shot had been perfect and must have destroyed the brute’s brain. What was left was no more than its death throes, the last few vestiges of life before it gave up completely. Of course, in those last moments it could still do more than enough damage, as the scream from Johnson had attested.
“Get it off him!” Wiggins shouted, pushing past me and moving towards where the creature had fallen on his comrade. Kane beat him to it, grabbing the slimy beast by one of its limbs and tugging it back into the water where it fell with a splash.
“It has probably killed him,” he said. “That scream had the sound of death to it.”
“Trust you to wish me the best,” came Johnson’s voice, weak but steady. “It’s taken a blasted chunk out of me but I’m not done for yet.”
“Let me take a look,” I said, picking up the fallen lantern and holding it over Johnson so as to examine his wounds. If Watson had been with us then I have no doubt that he would have been able to perform a more thorough investigation. Even with my limited knowledge I could see that Johnson would bleed to death unless we got a tourniquet on him. I told them as much.
“We haven’t time for this!” Kane growled. “The rest of the creatures will be right behind him.”
“All the more reason to work quickly then,” I said. “We don’t leave our wounded to die, certainly not when a few weeks and a regular change of dressing would see him back on his feet again.” I like to think Watson would have been proud of my sensitivity.
“Simple as that?” Johnson asked. “Told you it weren’t nothing, didn’t I?”
“I have the very thing,” said Challenger. He dropped to his knees, swung his backpack from his shoulder and began to hack at it with a knife. In a few moments he had removed one of the leather straps that bound it shut. “Is there space to cinch that above the wound?” he asked.
“Just about,” I replied, running it around the top of his thigh and inside his crotch.
“Careful where you go strapping that, Mr Holmes,” said Johnson. “I don’t want to lose anything more precious than my leg.” He gave a chuckle that turned into a moan as I pulled the leather strap through its buckle and fixed it as tightly as I could.
“He needs taking back to the surface,” I said. “There’s no use in his continuing with us. Wiggins can take him.”
The young lad’s face fell at the idea of his leaving us, but I could tell that his loyalty towards Johnson outweighed any argument.
“I could always come back,” he suggested, “once I’ve stashed him somewhere safe.”
I pulled him close and whispered in his ear, disguising the move with a hug. I trusted Kane didn’t know me well enough to appreciate how distasteful I find that sort of thing.
My natural inclination is simply to write down what I said to him at that point but I know that Watson would never forgive me—he does so love to leave things out to increase dramatic effect during his climaxes. It seems childish and unnecessary to me, but I will accede to his tastes as this account is, by the lion’s share, his.
I turned to Kane, curious to tell whether he had heard me. His face, however, was impossible to read.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said, pointing ahead and pushing past Kane so as to lead the way.
I gave one last glance at Wiggins, who winked at me. Then he lifted Johnson up and began to head back the way we had come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
So, our party was now two members down. It could have been worse —one of us could have been dead.
I was sure that, by leading the way, I might limit any future accidents. After all, bar Kane, I was the one who had some idea of what we were walking towards.
“We are nearly there,” he said, that growl of a voice coming from just behind me. “There is a hole in the tunnel wall just around the next bend. It used to be part of a factory I think—huge storage areas and chambers, abandoned until we came.”
“We came?” I asked. “I thought you were born down here?”
There was a slight pause. “Indeed, it was just a turn of phrase.”
He was growing less cautious now we were nearly there. I took that as a good sign. After all, it would be easier all round if we could just drop the pretence.
We turned the corner and Kane pushed past me. “I will lead,” he said. “It is difficult to find if you don’t know where it is.”
We gathered at the entrance, the hole covered by a draped length of sacking. “We are here,” said Kane. “We should enter quietly, my father may have left someone on guard. If we can sneak up on them quietly we stand a fair chance.”
“Quietly?” asked Mann. “It’s been as noisy as the Boer War down here so far.”
Kane simply stared at him so I took it upon myself to take control.
“We will do as Kane says,” I told them. “Whatever happens, stay calm.”
The time had come. I suspected I knew what would lie on the other side of that wall. I was fairly certain that I had the measure of how events would play out once we stepped into Mitchell’s lair. Now I would find out if I had been right.
One by one, we stepped beyond the sacking, entering the pitch-darkness of the room beyond. There was a smell, that sweet animal scent of the zoo. From the way the sound of our footsteps echoed I could tell the room we were entering was of a reasonable size. I knew as much when there was the sound of a struck match and the beam of a lantern shone upon us. Then another, and another, and yet one more …
We were surrounded by the beast men, holding up their lanterns and looking at us with their animal eyes.
“Ah, Holmes,” said Mitchell, still wearing his foul pig’s-head mask, “so good of you to join us.”
Kane went to stand by his master’s side.
“You really should have stayed within the safe walls of Baker Street,” Mitchell continued, his voice distorted as it echoed around the inside of that swinish cowl. “Now that you are all here I can do whatever I wish with you, my experiments can recommence with fresh supplies! You are entirely at my mercy!”
All of which, naturally came as something of a relief.
PART SIX
THE ARMY OF DR MOREAU
WATSON
I don’t think I have ever been so disturbed as during those few hours after my capture. Through my association with Holmes I have found myself in perilous situations many times. I have been chased by a wild dog on Dartmoor, shot at by vengeful big game hunters with air rifles, threatened by Thuggee occultists and even injected by Elwood Dunfires, the notorious Babel Poisoner. For all that, I was never more aware of the fragility of my own existence than when faced with the singular madness of Albert Mitchell!
He talked at some length as we travelled in his coach, listing mankind’s crimes against nature with the fervency and imbalance that can only come from the truly lunatic.
“Moreau wished to create a new species in that lab we shared,” he explained, many, many times over, “and he succeeded, through me! Watching the acts of atrocity he committed on those poor animals, the heartless cruelties, the pointless agony …”
“Didn’t stop him though, did you?” I could hardly help but point out after I had heard the story several times. “I agree fully with your attitude towards vivisection—I have yet to see a worthwhile justification for it. I, however, would simply have punched the blackguard on the jaw and let the animals go.” I stared out of the window at the passing street, rather that than look into his mad eyes. “But then, I’ve always been a rather practical man.”