The rest of the party had taken their light with them so I’ll never know what manner of beast I slipped past the curtain and into the water beyond. It had lank, greasy hair and chunky teeth but I could tell no more.
I could hear the sound of the melodramatic Mitchell, no doubt holding forth on quite how brilliant he was. I chose not to listen, rather hung back and started to ferret in my pack for the dynamite.
Holmes and I had agreed that in all likelihood a distraction would be needed; I can think of little more distracting than a whopping great explosion so set about arranging one.
It nearly happened early when young Wiggins snuck up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said. “Johnson insisted he could manage so the stubborn oaf’s off to fetch Mycroft. I thought you might need a hand.”
“Considering I almost blew one of mine off when you made me jump,” I admitted, “I’m only too glad of the offer. Keep an eye on that lot while I finish setting these fuses.”
The building had clearly once been used for storage. Room after room of open space now filled with the detritus of those that had made their home here. Conscious of not causing enough destruction to either bring the whole lot down on our heads or block Mycroft’s arrival with reinforcements, I ran a length of fuse from room to room, setting up a network of small explosions that I hoped would cause the requisite chaos when the time was right.
“He’s locked them up,” said Wiggins. “Get a move on, cause they’ll be heading back this way any minute.”
“Ready when you are, old chap,” I told him. “Might I suggest you duck?”
At which point I lit the first fuse.
JOHNSON
Only went and got myself bitten by a bloody sharktopus, didn’t I? I mean, seriously, the bloody thing went for me like a cross between a Chinese dinner and my mother-in-law. Would be me, wouldn’t it? Not Rover or Professor Gob, nah … “Shinwell Johnson, have a bit of that! What’s that, piece of your leg missing? Oh, yeah, that will have been me.”
I shot it, of course, right in its pie-hole. Only it didn’t think the bullet was filling enough, obviously, as it were still hungry. I knew a woman like that once, never met something wrapped in pastry she didn’t like. Big girl. We used to call ’er … well, never mind what we used to call ’er, it’s not a turn of phrase you’re likely familiar with, though you’ve obviously had a pie in your time too if you don’t mind me saying. No offence. You’re a big lad though, like your school dinners.
Anyway, so it’s bearing down on me and I shoot it right between the gnashers. I’d have aimed for somewhere more painful but, my eyes, I couldn’t see nothing but mouth and teeth.
I reckon it were dead by the time it took a piece out of me, probably didn’t get to do much more than swallow. Still, not much consolation to me is it? A bit to the right and it would have had more of a mouthful and I’d have been Sheila Johnson for the rest of me natural.
What’s that? Where are they? Oh yeah … I was getting to that. Down there, turn right, keep going until you hear the sound of screaming. Hole in the wall ain’t there?
Better get a bloody move on and all! You haven’t got time to be hanging around here gassing all night ’ave you?
HOLMES
“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.
Of course if I had been in Mitchell’s shoes I would have had Kane lead us somewhere utterly unrelated, take us on a wild goose chase and then unleash the wild monsters on us. That way, in case something went wrong—and he was dealing with me so of course something might go wrong—you haven’t just led your enemy right up to your front door. All in all, such an action might be most charitably described as moronic. But then you don’t expect genius when you’re talking to a man who wears a pig’s head as a hat. People like that are simply not the brightest sparks.
“Remember,” I told the rest of my party, “stay calm.”
The last thing we needed was one of them to bolt and set the animals into a frenzy. And what creatures they were! The equine creation mentioned by Fellowes, the leopard, a ram with ancient curled horns, a vulpine fellow, whose long white hair suggested to me Canis lupus arctos (my collection does in fact contain all canine species, not simply the domestic dog. Not so ridiculous now, is it?).
“Calm?” asked Mitchell. “What have you got to be calm about? You have been an idiot, led straight here by the nose, a mindless oaf who scarcely warrants his reputation.”
Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that.
“Mindless oaf? Surely not. There has been little opportunity to exercise my brain on this particular case, I grant you, but that can hardly be taken as evidence of stupidity.
“Though I grant you I should have seen the pattern days ago. A greyhound trainer and a Parisian furrier go missing then Andre Le Croix, the chef perhaps most famous for his foie gras, the recipe for which proudly reads like a torture menu for the unfortunate animal that goes into making it.” Watson thinks I pay no attention at all, this is far from true. I listen, I just do not always care. “Someone was clearly targeting people known for their mistreatment of animals. I presume it was Le Croix who ended up in a sack on the floor of the Bouquet of Lilies?”
Mitchell was clearly somewhat thrown by this sudden change in tempo, an effect I always find endlessly pleasurable. “That was all that was left of him by the time my friends here had dined on him.”
“Poetic I’m sure, I suppose we should be thankful you didn’t try to skin the furrier but merely settled for chaining him up and torturing him for a while.”
“We let him off lightly.”
“Oh shut up!” I shouted. I don’t anger often but this fool, this second-rate scientist with his hand-me-down philosophies and theories, was really beginning to get my dander up.
“So much for keeping calm,” I heard Inspector Mann mutter. I suppose he had a point.
“You are a charlatan!” I told Mitchell. “You claim to be fighting on the side of animals and yet you commit the most unspeakable acts upon them.”
“I improve them!” he screamed. “I fulfil their potential.”
“Really?” I looked to Kane. “What it must be to be so fulfilled.”
He growled and stepped in front of his master, his “father”, still as loyal as ever, whatever he might have told Watson and I.
“I am the equal of you,” he insisted, drool forming around his jaw.
“Hardly, though we might have a similar skill for fetching sticks, I’ll grant you that.”
I reached into my pocket for the whistle I had purloined off Perry but he had been thinking the same thing. He grabbed my wrist, pulled my hand out of the pocket and took the whistle himself. He dropped it to the floor and stamped on it.
“We’ll have no more of that,” he said.
“I suppose to have fallen foul of it a third time would have been rather embarrassing,” I said, only too aware that even if I could have incapacitated Kane the rest of the beasts would have remained fighting-fit. “It doesn’t bode well for your little sideline does it, really?” I looked to Mitchell. “I presume his criminal activities have been helping to fund your hobby? Just think what you could have achieved with an intelligent crook at your disposal, no doubt by now you would have managed to build an actual army rather than just skulking in the sewers with a handful of mongrels. Like an impoverished farmer with a grudge.”