YOU MUST KNOW THE KIND OF PERSON THIS STORY regards: one of those fellows whose knowledge of a particular subject is so vast, they might at first seem an intellectual giant. And yet… let the subject veer ever so slightly from the vein of their expertise and it quickly becomes clear that their focus on one area of knowledge has driven all other forms of learning from their brain. They know nothing of current events, of cultural mores, or of the splendid variety of the world around them. They cannot cook. They don’t know which clothes they ought to wear or how to take care of them. Indeed, they cannot even take care of themselves. They are smart/stupid.
Victor Hatherley was such a man. Absolutely brilliant. And absolutely dumb. His brain could unravel any complexity of hydraulic engineering, yet failed to detect a trap so simple most schoolchildren would not have fallen for it.
He came to my attention one morning, when I was having a bit of a lie-in. I should have risen. I should have begun the daily tread of medical monotony that had become my bane—checking temperatures and distributing pills and generally performing the tasks necessary that Mary might be able to say she was married to a doctor. Yet my covers were warm, and the day that faced me so devoid of the thrilling adventures I’d known with Holmes that I could hardly bring myself to arise and face it.
So instead, it came to me. As I lay there in my comfortable nest of pillows and procrastination, Chives the doorman bustled in and said one of the “old guards” had come in from the railroad with a patient. I groaned. This was one of the hazards of living so close to Paddington Station; every now and then, one got a railroad case. This much could be said for them: they were never boring. Oh no. In fact, they tended to be grisly in the extreme. Usually it meant that some poor fellow had gotten himself run over by a train, or had forgotten to take his face out of the way before two heavy passenger cars had rolled into each other and the giant iron couplers snapped shut. Often the victim of such an accident would be presented to me by the fellow who had caused said accident and then enlisted the help of several comrades to bring the unfortunate sufferer to my home in six or seven separate buckets and express the hope that there was “something I could do”.
With a heavy sigh, I instructed Chives to tell our guests I would be right down, then began pulling on the least blood-absorbent set of clothes I could find. Apparently, I was not fast enough for whatever “old guard” the railroad had sent, for I alighted at the foot of my stairs to find he had buggered off, leaving nothing more than my new patient’s card. This proclaimed him to be Victor Hatherley, a hydraulic engineer who either lived or worked—or, who knew, perhaps both—at 3rd floor, 16A Victoria Street. Stepping into my sitting room, I found the fellow in question propped up in one of my overstuffed chairs. He was more or less whole—which was rare for railway cases—but slumped in a stunned sort of stupor that gave me to know that whatever troubled him was no trivial concern. As soon as he saw me, his eyebrows lurched expectantly upwards and he asked, “Are you the doctor?”
“Yes. I am Dr. John Watson, at your s—”
“I think I need your help.” As he spoke, he brandished his right hand at me. It was swaddled in bandages. From the shape of it, I could tell that the man’s thumb must either be pressed very firmly down against the hand or—more likely, judging from the amount of blood on his dressings—gone. He broke into a high-pitched, hysterical sort of laughter that told of nervous delirium with a clarity that far surpassed the act of marching up to somebody and saying, “Hello. I have nervous delirium.”
“You need medical aid! Here, drink this!” I told him, lunging for my brandy bottle. I tipped out a tumbler full of the stuff and turned back to find his expression doubtful.
“Er… do you think I should? In this condition?”
I always hate it when people refuse medical aid. I slopped a spritz of soda into it and said, “Well, it’s mostly water, you know. For hydration.”
Dutifully, he took his medicine and began to drink it down.
“There’s a good fellow,” I told him. “Yes… yes… keep hydrating.”
He’d got about half the glass down and I knew he was on the point of either regathering his wits, or simply falling over. Presently, he gave a deep, shuddering sigh.
“Better?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so. I… ugh… thank you, Doctor.”
“Think nothing of it. Now, let’s have a look at that hand, eh?”
Four-fifths of which was fine. No problems. No damage. A bit dirty, perhaps, but overall devoid of troubles.
The other fifth was gone. Victor Hatherley’s right thumb had been severed by a single clean blow from a bladed instrument.
“Can you restore it?” he asked.
“No,” I scoffed, because the question was—on the face of it—an utterly stupid one. Yet this man had had his senses badly rattled and was likely in the process of getting a grip on the fact that he was… well… going to have difficulty gripping a lot of other things. “No,” I said, more gently. “I fear there is no way to regrow a severed thumb. All we can do is clean and dress the wound and see that it heals as best as it may, without infection. By Jove… what a terrible accident you must have had.”
“It was no accident, Doctor. I was attacked!”
“Ha! I almost had worse! Much worse!”
“Worse than this? Have you told the police?”
“I can’t! Would they even believe me? If it were not for this missing thumb, I would not believe it myself! How would I convince them I’m not mad?” Oh, what a strange expression of confusion and helplessness crossed his face as he said it. God help me, but it thrilled me to my core. Victor Hatherley had fallen victim to that particular brand of infamy Holmes and I had made our special purview.
Of course, I was currently banished from Holmes’s company. As such, I could not even perceive the door of 221B. Only those that needed Holmes could find him. But perhaps Victor Hatherley did. And, if I were the one to bring him to Holmes, might I not as well? Struggling to keep as much hopefulness as I could out of my voice, I said, “It will take me some time to see to your hand, Mr. Hatherley. While I work, why don’t you tell me what happened. What was the first occurrence that seemed strange?”
“Oh, that’s easy! I got a customer.”
“And that is… unusual?” I asked, as I began to clean the wound.
“Sure! You see, I apprenticed for seven years at Venner and Matheson—the famous hydraulic engineering firm. Nobody had more expertise than they, and frankly, none of them had more natural aptitude than I. Over the years, I learned every one of their techniques. So, when my term of apprenticeship was over, I told them, ‘Ha! I got the better part of that deal! Bet it won’t be long until I’ve surpassed you as the city’s finest firm, eh?’ Then I went into business for myself. I put up my shingle in the hallway and struck out on my own!”
“In the hallway?” I asked. Then, remembering his card, added, “The third floor hallway, on Victoria Street? You didn’t put a sign out in front of the building?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’d let me do that,” he scoffed. “It’s a residential building, after all. But lots of people go down that hallway! Why, practically fifty people a day, I bet!”
I choked down the observation that it was likely to be the same fifty every day and swallowed my question about what percentage of London’s populace Mr. Hatherley supposed might find themselves in need of hydraulic engineering help.
“But nobody came!” he complained. (Hardly surprising.) “And my old colleagues were no help at all. I can’t even count the times they called upon the help of their other past apprentices while I was there—or shuffled off smaller jobs they had no appetite for. Yet they never sent me a single one!”
“Peculiar,” I said, smothering a smile. “So, one supposes you failed to supplant them as the city’s finest firm?”
“In nearly two years of business, I’d had only two consultations and one small job. My total takings amounted to twenty-seven pounds, two shillings. I’ve been burning through my inheritance, just to keep myself fed. I’ve considered giving up any number of times. But then, I’d just be sitting at home with nothing to do. And, since I spend all my time sitting at home doing nothing anyway, it doesn’t seem that closing down the business would make a great change.”
“Right. But you had a customer?” I reminded him.
“Yes! Stark! He said his name was Colonel Lysander Stark. Oh, what a strange fellow he was! Thinnest man I’d ever seen. You’d almost doubt he was a man at all. He looked like a skull somebody had stretched cheesecloth over, then painted it to look like skin. You could see all the bones in his wrists and knuckles.”
“Did it seem like he might be sick?” I wondered. “Perhaps he had some form of wasting disease?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so. He was merely underfed. Or… not fed. In the course of our conversation he mentioned that he does not eat at all. He subsists entirely on juice.”
My eyes narrowed. “What kind of juice?”
Hatherley shrugged. “I don’t know. He just kept calling it ‘The Juice’. Mentioned it several times. And when I asked him what he meant by it, he just said, ‘We are what sustains us.’ Every time I said the phrase ‘The Juice’ that’s what he’d say: ‘We are what sustains us.’ Like a little prayer, you know? Like someone saying ‘amen’ when their priest is done speaking.”
“All right,” I said. “Slightly peculiar, but all right. Did he tell you how he’d heard of you?”
“Not really. He just popped in out of the blue yesterday morning and said I’d been recommended to him as an orphan and a bachelor.”
“Er… as a hydraulic engineer, you mean?”
“No. That was the peculiar thing. I mean, he did present himself as someone who wanted to hire me—that’s why I was so glad of his coming—but his first concern seemed not to be my credentials. He wanted to be certain that I was unconnected. He badgered me about life since my parents had died, what it was like to live alone, whether I was courting anybody. I said I wasn’t and I wouldn’t even know how. He suggested that perhaps my close friends or business partners could teach me. I said I had no close friends or business partners and that this conversation was making me feel rather lonely and could we have a change of subject. I was hoping he might say something about the job, but he had another concern.”
“Which was…?”
“Could I keep a secret. He didn’t want to tell me anything about the job’s particulars until I swore I wouldn’t tell anybody what I was doing or where I was going. Most especially where I was going. He didn’t even want me telling the man at the train station—not even to buy a ticket. In fact, he said he’d already got me one under an assumed name, so wasn’t that convenient. And I had to admit it was. The ticket was to Eyford. Though, I did notice it was for rather late that night. I wouldn’t even arrive at the station until 11:15. Colonel Stark said he’d come from his home in his carriage to pick me up. I suggested that if he was going home in the interim, why shouldn’t we both go together, right now.”
“And what did he say to that very reasonable suggestion?” I asked.
“He seemed rather upset by it. He said no, he’d got it all figured out. Whoever came to help him must be an orphan and a bachelor with no friends and no business partners who came in the dead of night without telling anybody where they’d gone and without truly knowing themselves.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “And this did not seem at all peculiar to you?”
“Well… peculiar, yes. But not really a problem, because how many friendless, wifeless, partnerless, parentless hydraulic engineers could there be in London? I was beginning to realize I could probably name my price and that was quite nice, because I hadn’t made very much money in the past few years.”
“Right. So did he finally tell you what he wanted?”
“First he snuck up on my door, then suddenly flung himself out into the hall to make sure we weren’t being spied upon. There was nobody. So he asked me to swear I would say nothing of the job to anybody. I told him I already had. He said to do it again and make him believe it. So I said, ‘Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.’ He said that would be sufficient, though if I did indeed stick a needle in my eye it would have to be removed before I performed my services, for he did not wish any crushed-up needles to jam his machine.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Mr. Hatherley continued, “Finally he told me what he wanted. In his home, he kept a large hydraulic press to make The Juice. The thing had got out of order and he was very worried. If he didn’t get it fixed right away, he might have to eat some food, he said, which was against his religion.”
“And which religion is this?” I asked.
“Do you know something odd? It was also called The Juice.”
“Right. Of course. Please continue.”
“He said he thought I could probably fix it in an hour. I was on the point of telling him I’d do it for twenty pounds, when he suddenly offered me fifty guineas if I’d do it all just as he requested. Well, since fifty is more than twenty, I said I would and bid him good day. Then there was nothing left to do but sit around and reflect on my change in fortune until it was time to get on the train.”
“Which you did?”
“Yes. By the time I got to Eyford, the station was nearly deserted. But there was Colonel Lysander, waiting with his horse and carriage. Oh, and it was beautiful. Why, I thought only people like the Queen rode around like that. All painted a deep red with brass lamps and fittings. The driver in fancy dress. And the horse—this perfect chestnut stallion without a hair out of place. Stark said I’d have plenty of time to enjoy the carriage, for it was a seven-mile drive to his house. But to me, it felt more like ten or twelve.”
My eyebrows went up again. “Then why did the horse seem so fresh after coming out to get you, do you think? Did you happen to observe where he drove you?”
“No. Colonel Lysander pulled all the shades down tight, so I could see nothing.”
“Do you remember any particular turnings?”
“Oh, there were plenty of them. Hundreds, I should think. Sharp ones. Every time we turned, I bumped my right shoulder against the side of the carriage, and I think I got quite the bruise. We drove and drove and drove, until we finally arrived at his home.”
“Ah! Can you tell me what it looked like?”
“I’m afraid not. Not the outside, anyway. We pulled nearly up to the door, you see, and the colonel wasted no time dragging me inside. It was richly furnished, all in dark colors. There was a strange, metallic odor. I’d never stopped to think of what a house might smell like if you lived there but never cooked, you know? He led me right into the sitting room and introduced me to his two companions—each as shrunken and skinny as he was. There was a man named Ferguson, whom Stark said was his clerk and manager. And then there was Stark’s daughter, Magerzart.”
Hatherley gave a little sigh as he said the name. I’ll admit it surprised me. I was willing, in the interest of gathering every useful clue I could, to let the story unwind how it may. I’d been patiently waiting for the moment it all went bad, leading up to the loss of Hatherley’s thumb and his doubt that the police would believe his story. What I had absolutely not been expecting was that he seemed utterly smitten.
“Magerzart, eh?” I said. “Tell me about her.”
Hatherley blushed. “Well, she was German, like her father. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but Colonel Stark spoke with an accent.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “And yet, why not? Suits him, really. Did he also happen to have a long black moustache he could twist through his fingers as he stared at you nefariously?”
“No, no, no,” Hatherley scoffed. “It was brown. Ah, but what should I tell you about Magerzart…? She just had this look in her eye… Care? Concern? Maybe a bit of guilt? She had the most striking eyes; they just popped right out at you, you know?”
“Because she was so emaciated?”
“Right. And her hair… She had this long blonde hair. I remember thinking how sad it was that it was falling out in chunks.”
“Malnutrition?”
“Yeah…” he sighed. “Well Stark and Ferguson went off to get the machine ready. They said something about how long it took to load up hundreds of empty bottles. Stark said his daughter would be happy to guard me. But then he said he thought he’d got the English wrong and asked me what the right word was. I said ‘entertain’ and he said yes, that must be right. So, there I was. Alone with her.”
“With her eyes bulging out all over the place, and hair wisping off like autumn leaves?”
“Ah, Magerzart… I had no idea what to say. I told her my name was Victor Hatherley and she told me she already knew that. So then I started telling her about hydraulic engineering, but she had no interest in it.”
“Nobody does,” I noted.
“So then I just started telling her what it was like to live alone. At first she had no interest in that, either. But then I mentioned it was kind of sad to take all my meals by myself.”
“Ah!” I said, failing to hold back a bit of a laugh. “I bet that got her interest!”
“Oh yes,” Hatherley agreed. “She wanted to know what it was like to live in a house with food in all the cupboards, just knowing you could have some whenever you pleased. And someone must have told her about crumpets once, for she wanted to know if they were as good as everybody said. And I said they were pretty good, actually, and then I asked her to marry me.”
“Wait! What?”
Hatherley threw up his free hand in exasperation and cried, “Well, I told you I had no idea how courting works! What was I supposed to do? There we both were, you know, facing lonely lives, trapped in our little worlds and… I don’t know… it just seemed like a chance for us both to break out!”
“Mr. Hatherley, there are a thousand steps a young lady expects between meeting a gentleman and being proposed to.”
“I know that! But I don’t know what those steps really are. And I realized I had this one small chance. So I took it.”
“She rejected you, I suppose?”
“Er… she didn’t say yes,” he confirmed. “I do think I surprised her a bit. She said she was a stranger to such things, too, as the young men she met never stayed long. I told her that sitting about doing nothing was a bit of a specialty of mine, so I wasn’t going to go away any time soon. She said she thought I probably was. Then I think we both felt bad and we sat there in silence a while. But then—and oh, it gave my heart such hope—she leaned in and asked if she should wed me, might she try a crumpet. I laughed and told her we could have crumpets every day! The look she gave me was just…”
Victor Hatherley trailed off, lost for words, so I suggested, “Hungry?”
“Yes! That’s it! Hungry! But then her father returned and said they were ready for me to see to the machine. So I picked up my tools and went to see the juice press.”
I gave a knowing nod. “Rather large, was it?”
“Really large! The whole room, in fact. The ceiling and floor are steel and sort of crossed with small, triangular nodules that look like they’re made to interlock.”
“Like the head of a meat tenderizer?” I asked.
“Very like that, yes. We went in one door, through the press room, and out a door on the other side to the machinery. They ran it for me, and I instantly detected the problem: one of the India rubber seals had burst and the resulting leakage robbed the machine of all force. Luckily, it was a standard size, so I had one with me and quickly replaced it. Oh, they were so happy. Mr. Ferguson kept jumping up and down, clapping his little hands and shouting, ‘Juice! Juice! Juice!’ Colonel Stark said I had certainly earned my fee, then he picked up my toolbox, opened the door to the press room, and gestured me inside. I thought he meant to follow me through, but a moment later I heard the door swing shut! I heard the clicking of the lock! I heard the machine come to life! Slowly, the ceiling began to press down towards me! By God! And over it all, the muffled cries of Ferguson: ‘Juice! Juice! Juice!’ I threw myself at first one door then the other, crying for mercy, trying to force my way through, but they were locked!”
“How did you escape?” I asked.
“Well, just as I’d given up hope—just as I’d begun to wonder if I should try to stand up to make it quicker, or lie face up, or face down, or what would be least painful—I heard the lock click at the other door. It creaked open, and I heard Magerzart’s voice say, ‘I don’t want you to die.’”
“That must have made you happy.”
“Oh! For two reasons! She took me by the hand and led me down this corridor and that, but we knew we’d run out of time, for we could hear the machine grinding to a halt and Mr. Ferguson’s cry of ‘Juice! Juice! Awwwww…’ She stopped by one of the windows and gave me a guilty look. ‘It is two stories to the ground,’ she said, ‘but I think you can make it.’ I climbed out on the ledge and started lowering myself down, yet I had no time. Colonel Stark came bursting in through the door, waving a cleaver about and demanding, ‘Magerzart! What have you done with the ingredients? Aren’t you thirsty?’ And she stomped her foot and said that what she was was hungry, and that she wanted a crumpet and didn’t think that was too much to ask. And he got really mad and started talking about how hard it is to raise a daughter on your own.”
“All this while you were dangling out the window?” I asked, picking up my bandages and beginning to wind them around his hand.
“Yes,” he said sheepishly. “I know I ought to have dropped down and escaped, but once I was out there, looking down, it seemed rather far to the ground. I was trying to make myself let go, but it was hard, you know? Then Ferguson burst in and pointed out that they could work this out later and Stark said he was right and came over and chopped my thumb off.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, I think he was aiming at my head, but I moved it. And there was this ‘thunk’ and I was falling—which was sort of a relief and sort of wasn’t. Luckily the flowerbed was pretty soft, so I hit it and rolled over a few times, then got up and started running. It was dark and I had no idea where I was, except ten or twelve miles from Eyford. I was confused and I didn’t even realize I’d been hurt. I just ran off into the woods. Well soon my hand was throbbing badly enough that I took a moment to look down and see what was the matter.”
“Probably a mistake,” I noted.
Hatherley nodded. “As soon as I saw what had happened… well… I think I was already a bit light-headed.”
“Blood loss. Adrenaline. Fear. Just fell off a house,” I explained.
“And when I saw it, I fainted.”
“Of course you did.”
“Which was extra inconvenient, for it turns out I’d been standing near a bit of a cliff at the time.”
“Ouch.”
“I had the sensation of falling—of bumping and bashing over and over down the hill—and then nothing. Nothing until morning. Oh, but what a morning! I woke some time after dawn to find one of the local dogs licking at my thumb stump.”
This was enough to make me pause my bandaging and reflect, “Yes. Er… maybe I’ll just disinfect this again, shall I?”
“And I struggled to my feet,” Hatherley continued, with an expression of utter wonder on his face. “And do you know where I was? In the rose bushes, just behind the train station! All I had to do was buy a ticket for London, and here I am. Bless me, but I don’t know how it happened! Did I run twelve miles before I fainted? Did I fall down a twelve-mile hill? Or Magerzart? Did she come and find me where I’d fallen, and carry me back to the station?”
I smiled. “Mr. Hatherley, from what you tell me I’m not sure Magerzart could lift that crumpet she wants so badly. I suspect there is a much more direct reason you woke up where you did.”
“But how can you explain it?”
“I think I’d start my reasoning by asking how a horse could pull a carriage ten miles by night and arrive with no hair out of place for the return trip. But come, enough of this for the moment. Let me get this hand bandaged up and I’ll take you to just the right fellow to help you out.”
* * *
Except I couldn’t. I found Baker Street with no problems, but 221B remained invisible to me. I paced up and down the street in a rage, howling my frustration to a stunned-looking Victor Hatherley. I assured him that the address I was looking for ought to be right here. I showed him 335 and 339 and insisted that the missing address was not—as one might assume—337, but was in fact my old residence 221B. I cursed the missing door for some minutes, while Hatherley stared at me as if I were an utter madman.
Finally, he cleared his throat, pointed at a blank stretch of wall and softly said, “You mean that door?”
“What? What? You can see it?” I shouted, clutching at his sleeve.
He gave me a slow, careful nod, as if he were very afraid of me.
“Open it,” I said.
He did. Baker Street bowed, wobbled, and expanded by thirty feet. I could feel it happening—sort of a sweeping, stretching, bending of the fabric of reality. My head swam and I vomited in my mouth a bit, but then swallowed it back down in triumph.
“Erm… are you all right?” Hatherley asked me.
“Fine. I’m fine. Just flush with victory, that is all. Let’s go in.”
“After you,” he said, which made me realize I still had a problem.
I couldn’t see the doorway. I could see part of the door held in Victor’s hand, but if I tried to look at where it connected to the building I got freshly nauseous. Which is not to say I did not attempt to go in anyway. Indeed, I vomited two or three times trying to determine where the disembodied hunk of door in Victor Hatherley’s left hand connected to the blank wall. But I just could not. The damned thing was all shimmery and elastic and made no sense. I got sick from staring at it. I tried to walk in, though the doorway was invisible to me. I stood just by the door Hatherley held open and walked forward, only to smack face first into a stretch of the Baker Street building, some fifteen feet away, by the entrance to 339. Victor stared at me, incredulous, then pointed into a stretch of frustrating, distorted reality and said, “It’s here.”
“I’m going to try again.”
“Right… well… what if I just went in without you, Doctor?”
“No! I’m coming too!”
Whatever Hatherley was going to say was interrupted by a familiar voice, calling, “I say, is there somebody there?”
“Holmes?” I crowed. “Yes, it’s me!”
“Watson? Go away!”
“No, I’ve got a case for you, Holmes. This is Victor Hatherley; he needs you!”
“Very well, but you don’t.”
“Yes I do! My life is terrible!”
Holmes gave a frustrated sigh. “Mr. Hatherley, do come up and join me.”
“But… er…” Hatherley dithered.
“Watson will be just fine. Now come on up and let’s see if we can get to the bottom of your problem, eh?”
Hatherley hesitated a moment, his gaze shifting from his shoes to the open door he held in his hand.
“Don’t you dare,” I told him.
With a guilty shrug, he lunged through the invisible door out of my perceptible reality. As soon as he shut it, Baker Street snapped back to its right shape. Or—as I knew in my heart—its wrong one.
“You little bastard!” I shouted, then slumped down to the sidewalk with my back against the wall where 221 ought to be. I took a moment to gather my thoughts and let my reeling stomach settle. Holmes was doing an altogether effective job of shutting me out, that much was clear. And he was likely right to do it. It’s true I had endangered myself terribly, trying to understand his mystic world. It’s true that my safest course of action was likely to return home to Mary and the life of wealthy domesticity that awaited me.
But dash it all, I didn’t want to! I wanted to go with Holmes! I wanted to solve a mystery! I let my head fall back against the wall. And suddenly, I could hear them—Holmes and Hatherley. Just faintly. I could not tell what they were saying, only hear their muted tones filtering through the wall. Hatherley sounded earnest. Holmes concerned. Where were they in Hatherley’s story? Was he giving Holmes all the crucial details?
“Did you tell him Stark kept saying, ‘We are what sustains us’?” I shouted.
No answer.
So a few minutes later, I shouted, “Did you tell him about the fresh horse?”
This time my efforts were rewarded. From within, I heard Holmes’s exasperated sigh, then footsteps clomping towards me. Suddenly, Baker Street expanded again – sending my head and stomach into fresh swirls – and I heard the sound of a window sliding open. Holmes’s head popped out of the void in my perception somewhere above me and called down, “Watson, go home!”
“I am home!”
“Bugger off!”
“No! I’m going to come and show you how much you need me by solving the crime. I’ve got it very nearly cracked already.”
“Oh, yes, yes. We all know you’re very clever. But I’m afraid this time you’ve been outmaneuvered entirely. You will not be involved in this investigation! Now, good day, sir!”
And the window slammed shut, returning Baker Street to its false but normal-seeming form and discombobulating me so badly that I fell all the way over. I lay there for a moment, panting and fuming. Vexing Holmes! Foolish Holmes! He thought he’d outmaneuvered me? Me? Preposterous!
I drew myself to my feet, fell down again, got up again, marched to the nearest train station and purchased one ticket to Eyford.
* * *
Holmes did not arrive for some time. I had adequate opportunity to get cleaned up as best I could, complete a circuit of the train station, locate the rose bushes Mr. Hatherley had woken up in and take note of the enormous village square just out front. I also could not help but observe the rather steep hill behind the train station and the spires of some solitary house rising from behind the woods that stood at the top. I smiled. Satisfied I had the case cracked, I settled in to wait for Holmes.
The next train came. Holmes did not. He was not on the next one either. Or the next. I think I must have dozed off slightly, for I found myself startled to wakefulness some time in the mid-afternoon by the sound of familiar voices. Sure enough, there stood Holmes, just some thirty feet down the platform with Hatherley by his side. He must have deemed that some intellectual assistance would be necessary, for the diminutive form of Scotland Yard’s most accomplished vampiric detective—Vladislav Lestrade—was just emerging from the carriage, followed by his towering colleague, Grogsson. Holmes had a local map with a large red circle drawn on it and the four men seemed to be involved in some form of disagreement over where to begin their search.
“…somewhere between ten and twelve miles from here,” Holmes was saying, “but in which direction?”
“To the north, I would think,” said Lestrade, in his thick Romanian drawl. “Mr. Hatherley did not mention ever feeling the carriage travel up or down a hill, and the land there is flatter than any other direction.”
But Holmes disagreed. “Ah, but consider the criminal advantages to be had south of here. It is far less inhabited thereabouts and mischief is best accomplished in solitude. What do you think, Grogsson?”
The hulking inspector thought a moment, then decided, “West!”
“Why?”
“Dat’s ware cowboys is frum.”
“I have often heard that,” Holmes conceded, “but I fail to see what that has to do wi—Oh, by the Twelve Gods! Watson?”
And there I was, advancing towards my friends with a satisfied smirk on my face. “Oh, I think I could lay my finger on the correct spot. Why don’t you gentlemen start your search here?”
I pointed to the exact middle of the circle Holmes had drawn.
“Watson, go home. Right now,” said Holmes.
“No, but I’ve solved it.”
“I don’t care. Go home.”
“Besides which,” said Lestrade, “your theory is preposterous. Mr. Hatherley remembers driving for ten to twelve miles. You are pointing to our current location.”
“He also remembers bumping his right shoulder every time the carriage turned,” I said, pointing out over the village square. “And he says the horse who arrived to pick him up had not a hair out of place!”
“So?” grunted Grogsson.
“So, a single horse does not pull a carriage ten miles over country roads and arrive at this station still looking fresh. You must—”
But Holmes cut me off. “Pay him no heed, gentlemen. Watson is merely having trouble adjusting to his new life. He is not to assist in the solution of this or any other crime, or he will get himself all doomed again.”
Grogsson and Lestrade gave heavy sighs and made “Remember? We promised” eyes at me. I felt I was losing my chance. Luckily the stationmaster was only a few paces away. I ran to him, calling, “Excuse me, sir, excuse me. Do you know Colonel Stark?”
“Who?” the man replied.
“German fellow, incredibly skinny.”
“Oh! Dr. Becher?”
“Quite possibly the man I’m looking for,” I told him. “Odd sort of fellow?”
“Oh, I should say.”
“Came here last night?”
“That he did.”
“Spent an hour or two driving his carriage counterclockwise around the village square?”
“Ah, well, he often does that,” the stationmaster confirmed. “Whenever he’s got an out-of-town guest. Says it wards off bad luck for the visit.”
“Hmph!” I scoffed. “So, you’ve seen him pick up several ‘guests’ from this station! I wonder, have any of those people returned this way?”
“Er… now that I come to put my mind to it… no.”
“Ha, ha!” I shouted and turned to my friends in triumph. Yet when I beheld them, my features fell. They seemed to have been paying little attention to my revelations, but were instead concentrating on a subject I cared for less.
“…do not intend to wait for the next train,” Holmes was saying. “We need to make sure he is on this one and I’m not above using a bit of force to accomplish it.”
Grogsson stepped towards me with a grim little “Sorry, Watson-man” smile on his face, clenching and unclenching his hands.
“But wait!” I cried. “Don’t you see? I can help you!”
“Nope,” said Holmes. “You’ll die. Grogsson? If you’d be so kind…”
And my friend Torg took two steps forward, closed his hands around my waist, and hoisted me into the air. I had just a moment of hope when I heard the stationmaster cry, “Hey! You can’t do that! Help! Help! Police!”
But on that last word, my hopes fell. Sure enough, Lestrade’s hand disappeared into his coat and re-emerged holding his badge.
“Oh,” said the surprised stationmaster. “Then… you actually can do that?”
“So it would seem,” said Lestrade smugly. “Now, if it’s not too much trouble, I believe my friends and I would like to purchase one ticket to wherever that train is heading.”
* * *
Three minutes later, I sat in my seat with my arms crossed, staring glumly out the window at the three friends whose adventures I had so often shared. Torg, to his credit, looked a bit guilty about shutting me out. Lestrade looked as if he found the whole thing irresistibly entertaining. Holmes’s look was sad but resolved and Victor Hatherley made the face of a man reflecting that, not even twenty-four hours previously, he’d owned two thumbs and never had to endure such bizarre social circumstances. Holmes, no fool—
Or… Wait, let me start that sentence again.
Holmes, accustomed to my stubbornness, was taking no chances. He remained just on the other side of my window, arms crossed against his chest staring masterfully at me through the glass. There he stayed until the whistle blew, the pistons chugged, and the train began to pull slowly forward. I stared dejectedly back as the train gathered speed. I would swear I could see Holmes’s lips form the words “Well, gentlemen, that’s that, eh?” before he turned his back on me and headed off down the platform in search of a carriage to hire.
At which point, I jumped off a moving train.
I know it was foolish. Up until that moment, if anybody had asked me if such an action was advisable, I’d have had to say, “As a doctor, I recommend against it.”
Ever since that moment, I would have to say, “As a doctor who has jumped off a moving train, I strongly recommend against it.”
I mean, it didn’t look like we were moving much faster than a run. And as we went around the first bend, I reflected that the hill that sloped away from us on the far side of the train from the station looked rather soft and loamy. And would not the body of the train hide me long enough for me to conceal myself from the platform by lying down along the slope? The conductor was one car ahead of me, so what was the chance he’d even notice? I got up as calmly as I could, tipped my hat to the lady across from me, went to the door, opened it, stepped out onto the platform between my car and the next, and threw myself off.
I think I was airborne when the first truth revealed itself to me: I was rather a poor judge of speed. I remember looking down at the ground as it traversed beneath me and thinking, Wait now… Does it ever seem to be going by quite so fast when I’m running across it?
No, I realized. No, it does not.
The second truth I learned this day was as follows: there is an important difference between “soft to the touch” and “soft enough to throw your whole body onto at twenty miles per hour”. Though that welcoming, loamy bank surely fulfilled the first condition, it left something to be desired in the second. I hit the ground running.
But not—and it turns out this was rather important—running at a full twenty miles per hour. My right ankle barely had time to twist terribly before my feet were out from under me and I plunged forward into the bank. I felt my body plough down through the wet grass into the soil below, then my feet came up over my head and I was airborne once more.
From there, the situation was completely beyond my control. Feet into the grass. Face into the grass. Feet into the grass. Face into the grass. Slide to a halt. Roll unceremoniously to the base of the hill and groan for a few minutes. My right ankle burned with a hot, dull pain. And as I lay there, I began to realize something was wrong with my opposite shoulder, too. I couldn’t move it. And, when I turned to look at it, my chin bumped into the head of my humerus in a location I did not expect it to be. With shock, I realized it was dislocated. I recoiled in surprise—which may have been lucky, actually—for as I jerked my body, my shoulder slid back into place. I experienced a wall of blinding pain that left me unable to even scream, combined with the strange relief of having my body returned to its right shape. Only people who have ever been conscious for a relocation of a limb will know what I’m speaking of.
So there I lay, slowly regathering my thoughts. After a while, I realized I had to move. Because what is worse than jumping off a train and getting hurt? Jumping off a train and getting hurt for no reason. My military experience had taught me well what rest does for injuries. It heals them. But first, it makes them intolerable. One does not stiffen up until one rests. Grunting and moaning, I rose to my feet and began dragging myself back towards the station. So slow was my progress, and so steep the slope I’d fallen down, that Holmes and company were gone by the time I staggered across the tracks to the platform.
“Oh! You’re back!” the surprised stationmaster said, then made a bit of a face and added to himself, “That can’t be right…”
“Never mind that,” I told him. “That house I can just see, through the forest behind the station. That’s where the skinny German lives?”
“What do you know about him? Anything? Anything I might use to make my approach to him? Do you know his job? His interests?”
The stationmaster thought about that. “I know how he makes his money. He sells some sort of health tonic to those… er… what’s that word… you know, for a crazy person, but they’ve got so much money it’s not right to call ’em crazy?”
“Eccentric.”
“That’s right! He sells health tonics to rich eccentrics.”
“Thank you. I believe that will suffice,” I said, and stumbled off behind the station. I made it through the rose bushes without difficulty and began the laborious process of picking my way up the hill. My breathing was ragged and my head buzzing dully when I at last made it to the top, around to the stately drive, and up the path to House Stark—or Becher—or whatever.
There was a bell. I rang it.
A few moments later I heard footsteps (rather light footsteps), the doorknob rattled, and the door swung open. Behind it stood an impossibly thin Scotsman with the most threadbare red mustache I think I have ever seen. Ferguson, no doubt. He looked utterly stunned to have a visitor. Then, after taking a moment to scan my person, he looked even more stunned than that.
Right. I hadn’t stopped to think what the state of my appearance must be.
Or how badly I wanted to lie down, have a little cry, and sleep for two days.
Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “Hello. I am a wealthy eccentric who has recently had reason to worry for my health. I was told you might be able to help. For the correct result, money would be no object.”
Ferguson broke into a hopeful smile. “Oh, yes. Please. Step inside, won’t you. I fear we were not prepared to receive visitors. Nevertheless, I believe the colonel may be able to see you. Would you care for tea while you wait?”
“Yes, tea would be wonderful,” I told him.
“I shall return with some,” he assured me. “And I shall inform Colonel Stark of your arrival. Just a moment, please.”
By “a moment” he must have meant “look out, I walk a bit slower than most glaciers”. I’ll never forget how he stared with transparent dread at the flight of stairs he was going to have to climb. This gave me a needed boost of confidence. Had I just entered into the realm of three dangerous murderers alone, unarmed and badly hurt? Yes. Yet it is much easier walking into the lions’ den when you realize that all the lions present would be unable to rise again, should you choose to place a finger or two against their chest and push them over. I settled in to wait, content that, despite my wretched shape, my situation was not dire. I adjusted myself in my chair constantly. It was best not to allow myself to rest too much. Best not to allow my limbs to stiffen. I tested and retested my left shoulder, and waited.
Presently, I became aware of a light scraping noise behind me. Turning, I beheld the second of my foes: Colonel Stark’s daughter, Magerzart. She stood just behind an ornate globe, looking at me with wide, hungry eyes. To say some patches of her long blonde hair were missing would be somewhat misleading. Better to say some patches were left. There was a quality of desperation in her stare. Clearly, the loss of yesterday’s meal had done her no good.
“Ah! Good afternoon,” I said.
Her parched lips parted and—just at the edge of hearing—a single word hissed forth.
“Jooooooooose…”
“Um… yes. Quite right. I am here to inquire after some of your father’s juice. His, ah, his health tonic. Yes.”
“Joooooooooooooooooooooooose…”
“Indeed.”
This pleasant drawing-room banter was at last interrupted by Ferguson. The rattle of cups alerted me to his return. Or rather, the rattle of cup. The silver tray he carried bore one teapot, a creamer of milk, a dish of sugar cubes and a single cup. Judging from the trembling of his limbs, two cups would have been too heavy a load for him to bear.
“Oh,” I said. “Will neither of you be joining me?”
“I fear not. Everybody in this house strictly adheres to Colonel Stark’s miracle diet.” Ferguson’s eyes flicked over to Magerzart, who was staring in rapt fascination at the small pile of sugar cubes. “Strict adherence!” he added. She gave a sad little moan.
“An admirable resolve,” I said. As Ferguson seemed to be exhausted, I leaned forward and begin fixing myself a cup of tea, with a splash of cream and—much to Magerzart’s chagrin, I think—two lumps of sugar. Just as I began to savor my first sip, a door opened at the top of the stairs and the man of the house appeared. Colonel Stark was every bit as thin as his fellows, yet his eyes were alight with a merciless energy—the spark of intelligence, bereft of pity. When he spoke it was with just a touch of accent, yet the care with which he both chose and pronounced his words showed that his was a mind accustomed to rigorous study.
“Ah! My honored guest,” he said. “I do hope you will forgive the delay, but I was not in a condition to receive company, Mr. ah…?”
“Doctor John Watson, at your service,” I told him. I had no prevarication ready, but did I need one?
“Hmm… your name is familiar, I think,” said my host.
“I’ve been in the papers of late. I recently sold a pearl of great value to the Russian czar.”
“Ah, yes. That was it.”
“As a doctor who spends his days helping his patients retain their health in the face of advancing age, I have been unable to help but notice: I never actually manage to succeed at it. I have long dreaded the decline in my own health. Yet I have heard, sir, that for those with sufficient funds, you might have an alternative. Is that correct?”
“I do,” he said, with a little smile. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a simple glass bottle, its cork sealed with a splash of white wax. “Would you like to see?”
“Very much.”
He glided down the stairs towards me. I took another sip of tea, striving to seem as calm and unconcerned as I could. He cradled the bottle in both hands and presented it gently to me. I took it and turned it appraisingly about. After a few moments I said, “It seems as if the base is made of multiple liquids.”
“Very astute. The primary base is pure rainwater. At the top you must have noticed the thin layer of corn oil we employ. This is used purely for its properties as a sealant. It stops air from touching the surface of the water and mingling with the precious cargo therein.”
“Which seems to include a mint leaf and a twist of lemon?”
“Merely as garnish,” he scoffed. “My companions and I do not partake of such frivolities, but for the distinguished palates of our patrons, we include them.”
“I see. And what is this pulpy red mass, floating in the middle of the jar?”
“The active ingredient,” said the colonel, with ill-concealed glee.
“Which is…?” I prompted.
“A trade secret.”
“Yes, of course,” I demurred. I paused for another sip of tea—so warm and welcome—and then added, “Such a compelling appearance. As a doctor, I cannot help but reflect that it looks almost like pulverized connective tissue, holding an unidentifiable mash of flesh and… unless I miss my guess… half a tooth?”
“Oh, you can spit that out,” he assured me. “The tooth is only a byproduct of our manufacturing process.”
“And what benefish could I expect, from dringong this juice?”
“Ah, but you misunderstand. The juice is not a single treatment; it is a process. Yes. You see, this is hardly a representative sample—too many solids, you know. You begin with fare such as this, and slowly advance to the pure juice.”
“Joooooose…” Magerzart whispered reverently.
“We are what sustains us,” Ferguson added.
“Halbs,” I said, which was not the word I had intended. In fact, it was not a word at all, was it? I blinked, confused by my inability to express the thought I wanted. Or even to remember what that thought was. And why did my limbs feel so buzzy and distant?
Colonel Stark reached over to retrieve his precious bottle before I had the chance to drop it. From the other side, Ferguson leaned in with a horrible, knowing smile to retrieve my tea.
Oh god… my tea…
“I think we are nearly ready to begin,” Stark opined. “Ferguson, why don’t you go see if the press is ready?”
“Jooooooooooooose…” said Magerzart, as darkness claimed my sight.
As if from the depths of a dream, I could hear Ferguson’s excited, “Juice! Juice! Juice!”
“We are what sustains us,” Stark agreed.
* * *
I awoke sometime later with something cold, metallic, and discomfortingly serrated pressed against my cheek. What was it that had wakened me? The closing of a door, wasn’t it? The harsh clicking of a lock. Beneath it all, I could hear the constant hiss of escaping steam. Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I realized I was in a small chamber with featureless white metal walls. Beneath me was a floor of solid steel, corrugated with the familiar pyramids of a meat tenderizer. The ceiling above me was made of the same. From behind one of the walls, I heard Ferguson’s muffled tones.
“He is still sleeping. Please, may we begin?”
“No,” came Stark’s voice. “Fear makes The Juice sweeter. We must wait for him to waken.”
“But I am so thirsty,” Ferguson complained. “It will be a poor batch, anyway. The ingredients have been drugged.”
“Then we will all sleep deeply tonight!” Stark snapped. “Yet this does not change the fact that I intend to enjoy myself. Patience! We will wait for the sweetest juice!”
With that, the full horror of my situation occurred to me and a wave of cold sobriety swept away the last effects of Ferguson’s tea.
By God! What a fool I’d been! What a reckless fool! Was there any way to save myself? What could I do?
In my panic, I nearly scrambled to my feet. But no! I stopped myself just in time. The one thing I must certainly not do was make any sort of noise. If Stark and Ferguson realized I was conscious, I knew they would activate their machine, and that ceiling would start to come down towards me. Struggling to master myself, I gazed around at my surroundings. The scant light came from a few cracks in the walls around me—that must be the where the doorways were. Yes, both sets of cracks defined rectangles and each featured a round gleam of light halfway up—a keyhole! There were no handles on the inside walls of the chamber—the falling ceiling would have sheared them off—but I had access to the keyholes. Then again, I had no key. If only I had a thin metal device I could insert into the lock! Might I perhaps succeed in picking it?
But what had I? Nothing? Wait! My belt! I could use the central pin to… But no. Moving my hand as silently as I could to my waist, I realized I’d been stripped to nothing but my underclothes. This made sense, I supposed. Who wanted to drink herringbone-flavored juice, after all?
As I sat, despairing, a second avenue of hope presented itself. From behind the other door, I could hear a faint tapping and a lilting voice absent-mindedly singing, “Joosy Joose, sweet Joose, you’re my friend.”
Mindful not to make a sound, I eased myself to my knees, then my feet, and padded softly over to Magerzart’s door. Hopeful that the hissing steam in the room behind me might cover my voice, I whispered, “Magerzart? Is that you?”
There was a moment of silence, then…
“I’m not supposed to talk to you, Joose.”
“No, no! My name is John.”
“Well… soon it will be Joose.”
Trying to ignore the horror of that statement, I focused on ingratiating myself with her. “Why are you over on this side? Why not be with your father?”
She gave a guilty little sigh. “The cracks on this door are bigger so, sometimes when the ingredients pop, I get a little preview that comes through the cracks. And I’m so thirsty! I must be sustained.”
“But you must save me!”
“No.”
“Why not? You saved Victor.”
“Yes, but he is much more handsome than you.”
“What? No he’s not!”
“And he’s nicer. You are only normal. He is wonderful and he’s going to come and marry me and we’ll have real crumpets! Not just Joose. Oh! But I do love you, Joose, of course!”
“Stop calling me Juice!” I insisted, and gave the door a little punch.
I should not have done it. It gave forth a significant rattle and from behind the other door, I could hear Ferguson crow, “Ah! He’s awake!”
“Finally,” said Stark. I heard him click a heavy lever into place and then—to my horror—the hiss of steam died away, replaced by a faint but regular chuff, chuff, chuff. The room gave a tiny lurch. The air filled with the subtle grinding noise of well-oiled metal pieces sliding against each other. Above me, the ceiling began to descend. Oh, how much more merciful it would be if it had suddenly leapt down and pulped me before I had the chance realize what was happening. But no. Time to dread. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? I had it on the highest authority that fear made the juice sweeter. With my hand stretched up above my head, I could just feel the cold teeth of the ceiling pressing down at me. I tried to push back, tried to keep my arm straight, but with no sign that it was even laboring harder against the resistance, the ceiling continued its descent.
I ran to Stark’s side and threw my body against the door. There was a loud metallic bang, but the catch held. My injured shoulder and ankle sang with pain. “You can’t do this!” I cried. This was met only with laughter.
I ran about the room, raking my fingers against the walls. Could I pull a panel loose? Use it to jam the ceiling? No, I could get no purchase. All I could hear were the voices of my tormentors.
“Juice, Juice, Juice!”
“We are what sustains us,” Stark murmured.
“Joose? Can you hear me? I’ve put my mouth down near the crack of the door. Can I have a preview?”
“You bastards! I’ll kill you!” I shouted.
In response, I heard Stark say in his most judgmental tone, “Hmm. This statement smacks of overconfidence.”
Was there something I could do with the locks? I turned to run to Magerzart’s side, but on my first step, my head contacted the ceiling. Its sharp steel pyramids tore into my scalp. By God it stung, but what was that compared to what was coming? I remembered Hatherley’s words about trying to judge what might be the least painful position to be crushed to death in. Now I wished I’d let him finish the thought; an expert’s opinion would have been most welcome.
Crouching beneath the ceiling, I ran to Magerzart’s door and clawed the lock. But to what end? My fingers could not fit inside, and I had no tool. I wasn’t like Holmes; I could not simply conjure what I needed.
But wait!
I could.
On the night we had imprisoned a sea-monster in my wardrobe, Holmes had shown me how to conjure my soul-blade. Compared to his own demonic implement, mine had been laughable in the extreme—a three-inch-long sliver of bone. But would that not fit into the keyhole?
What was its name? Argh! What was the damn thing’s name? I had only to speak it, and I would have it. The ceiling was on me now, pressing me down. I was bent over, staring at that keyhole, shouting nonsense words. I remembered that the name of my soul-blade had something to do with its material. Some scientific or medical word for bone.
Nothing.
“Calceous!”
“Um… Calcifer?”
“Ossifer?”
Instantly a ragged pain shot through my right arm. Twice in the same day: that feeling of terrible pain, married to an instant swell of relief. I gave a cry of agony and triumph. This was answered by a fresh wave of excitement from my captors.
“Juice! Juice!”
“Sustenance!”
“Preview!”
I didn’t care; there in my palm sat the irregular white rod. I threw myself against Magerzart’s door and thrust it into the lock.
“Eek! What is that?” I heard her shout.
I could feel the tumblers in there. A strong lock, I thought, but not an overly complex one. That was good. I was bent double now. Still a few feet to go before the corrugated ceiling crushed me to death. Yet only a few inches before it closed down past the level of the keyhole, and what hope would there be for me then?
Suddenly—oh, most blessed of sounds!—a click. With a final push, the door burst open and I was out, into the light, into safety!
Well… partial safety. Before me stood Magerzart, wielding a cricket bat.
“Madam,” I said in my most warning tone, holding Ossifer in the guard position in front of me, “don’t.”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeahhhh!” she replied, throwing herself forward and swinging the cricket bat at my face.
I ducked under the blow and scuttled towards one corner of the room, crying, “No! Really! Don’t!”
But she came at me again, forcing me to dodge back against the wall.
“Look here, if you hit me with that thing—” I started to tell her, but was interrupted by another onslaught.
“Yaaaaah!”
“—you’re going to break my face and both of your wrists!”
“Rhaaaaaah!”
“I don’t mean to be rude, madam, but you are exceedingly frail and I don’t believe such an act could go well for either of us.”
“Hyaaaaah!”
“Very well! If you will not listen to reason…”
And I did it. For the first time, I willingly unleashed the power of my soul-blade on a living creature. Casting my Hippocratic oath aside, I ducked back from her next attack, then sprang forward behind it and struck forth with the physical embodiment of all my rage, anger and hate.
It poked a small hole in her, just near the wrist.
Magerzart froze where she was and stared at me, aghast, as if I had wounded her. And I suppose, technically, I had. Mostly though, she just looked like I’d hurt her feelings—as if she found my conduct rather un-juicemanly. We stood, facing each other in silence. I cleared my throat. I think I was just about to form some kind of apology when the air was rent by a terrible howling and a purple bolt of demon-fire smashed through the wall behind Magerzart, streaked over her shoulder, across the room and through the wall behind me.
Azazel’s fire! I had seen Holmes summon it time and again!
“Holmes!” I shouted, “It’s me! I’m here!”
A second bolt came through the wall, screamed just past my left leg, blew the door off the pressing room behind me and buried itself in the foot-thick crushing-plate ceiling (which was, I could not help but note, just eight or nine inches from the floor now). The purple flame hissed out, leaving a black and melted crater in the side of the plate. Molten metal dripped down onto the floor.
“Er… yes… by which, I sort of meant, ‘Holmes, I’m here, so please stop shooting.’”
But those things always seemed to come in threes. The final blast came high, passing above Magerzart’s head and my shoulder and arcing all the way through the juice press to the room beyond. From within came a horrible, shrieking boom and Stark and Ferguson met a fate nearly as horrible as the one they had inflicted on so many others. It seems the room on the far side of the juice chamber was the machine room. Holmes’s final bolt had holed the boiler, filling the room with scalding steam. As I stood there, listening to my antagonists’ mortal screams, well…
It is hard to pity such men, I know.
But I tell you this, dear reader: for anyone standing just a few feet away, listening to it happen, it is impossible not to.
Magerzart’s eyes went wide with horror.
Or… wider.
And finally, the belabored wall behind her met its match as Torg Grogsson—eyes alight with rage—tore away the door and its frame. Behind him stood Holmes with the green fires burning in his eyes and his left fingers still smoking from Azazel’s onslaught. Then Inspector Lestrade ducked under one of Torg’s massive arms, stepped into the room, and announced, “Miss Magerzart Stark? It should not surprise you to hear: you are under arrest.”
But the next figure disagreed. Victor Hatherley flung himself into the room, wrapped protective arms around Magerzart, and insisted, “You can’t! She must come and be my bride. I shall feed her crumpets every day and call her Maggie.”
“Of course you will,” said Holmes. “Because engineers solve problems.”
“But… no,” Lestrade stammered. “She drinks people. Her whole life she has subsisted by drinking person after person and—though I am aware of a certain level of hypocrisy inherent in the fact that it is me saying this—that is not okay.”
“Ohhhhhh, are you sure, Lestrade?” Holmes asked. “I mean, it’s not her fault what her father fed her, is it? And she seems so nice.”
“But… drinking people…” Lestrade protested. “That is not acceptable, or I’d have been doing it this whole time. Really, does… um… does anybody else wish to weigh in on the subject? Given my extraordinary self-control all these years, I feel like I should have the moral high ground here. Yet… somehow, I also feel like I sort of don’t. Anybody else? Anybody?”
“Pick fast,” Grogsson urged. “Da house on fire.”
“Purpul fire,” he added.
Then, “Pretty.”
He wasn’t wrong. Holmes and Azazel’s mutual contribution seemed to have had a greater effect than any of us had at first realized. The destruction of the house on the hill was the talk of Eyford for years to come, mostly because of the beauty of the blaze. The death of Colonel Stark (or Dr. Becher, or any of the dozen or so other aliases he maintained) and his unfortunate clerk, Ferguson, were met with grief, but not surprise. Their charred remains were found right next to the ruins of a strange machine and anybody who kept strange machines in the house should expect… well… pretty much exactly what they’d got. Everybody was happy that that nice Magerzart girl had survived the blaze.
Even happier when they were told they could just call her Maggie.
Maggie herself was in a state of shock and dismay, though her first taste of crumpet went a great way towards dispelling this. Holmes and Hatherley argued long and hard that she should not face criminal charges, but should be released to Mr. Hatherley’s matrimonial guardianship. Lestrade assured them that was not a thing. Then again, much of the evidence had been destroyed in the fire, the case was a bizarre one (meaning that it would be difficult to prosecute, especially without Hatherley’s help) and Grogsson didn’t feel like writing a report. As such, love won out and Magerzart moved in to Victor’s third-floor office. Though she’d had a somewhat sheltered childhood, she rapidly surpassed her new husband in business acumen and helped him prosper. We checked in on her a few times to make sure she wasn’t having any… relapses… but all seemed to be going rather well—not withstanding the few times she forgot herself and addressed me as “Dr. Joose”.
As for myself, the outcome came much more abruptly.
“How did you find me?” I gasped as my friends and I stood before the burning ruins of House Stark.
Holmes gave me a rather severe look. “We were still debating where to begin our search as we sat in the carriage. Lestrade was very concerned over what you’d said about our goal being in the middle of our circle. He said he wished we’d listened to what you were saying to the stationmaster and that perhaps we’d better ask him what he remembered of the conversation. So, we turned back and who should we see but the stationmaster, who was all concerned because he’d just got a wire from the next station up the line that some fool had thrown himself off the train. He also remembered seeing you again and wondering if the two phenomena might be related. When we asked him where he’d last seen you, he said, ‘Stumbling up the hill behind the rosebushes, towards the skinny German’s house.’ From there, of course, I had it all figured out in an instant.”
From behind Holmes came a burst of strenuous throat-clearing.
“By which I mean, of course, Lestrade had it all figured out in an instant.”
“Well, I’m glad you came,” I said. “Another few minutes and I probably would have—”
“Died?” Holmes interjected. “That’s the word you’re looking for, isn’t it, Watson? That your life was in terrible danger? Again? And that if it was not for the timely intervention of your friends, you’d have been killed? Because we know that, John. We are horribly aware of the fact. By the Twelve Gods, it sometimes seems that keeping you alive is becoming a full-time job!”
“But—”
“No! There is no ‘but’. There is only you, going home, right now.”
Which…
…resentfully…
I did.