A Betrayer Betrayed
IT WAS NOT QUITE DAWN WHEN WHATELEY CAME for us. Holmes and I had waited patiently, I feeling more than a smidgeon of unease at the escape plan my friend had outlined but trying to console myself that, for all its hazardousness, it could not be worse than anything Whateley – or R’luhlloig – might have in mind. Also, I myself could not think of a better plan, and that was not for want of trying.
A key turned in the lock. Holmes and I swiftly took up the positions that he had previously specified. We affected nonchalance as the barn door swung open and in stepped Whateley.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I bid you good morning.”
Hovering just behind him was the nightgaunt, a black silhouette like his own shadow enlarged and horrendously distorted.
My Webley was in his hand, and he waved it at both of us. “You will see that I have come armed. You will see, too, if you look carefully at the cylinder of the revolver, that there are rounds in the chambers. I found your box of ammunition, Doctor, in Mr Holmes’s portmanteau. I have no desire to shoot either of you. I will as a last resort, but to kill you so mundanely would be a disappointment.”
“You have something else in mind,” said Holmes, “something more elaborate.”
“Something positively Gothic,” said Whateley with relish. “A death so harrowing, even Mr Poe might have blanched at the thought of it.”
“Involving the ghoul, no doubt.”
“A shame not to exploit the beast’s peculiar talent, if I can. It craves flesh and is none too fussy where that flesh comes from, or what condition it is in.”
“You refer to our flesh.”
“The meat of two fine Englishmen. A delicacy, I’m sure. But there will be little point feeding you to it all in one go. As you can see from the leftovers in the cage, a ghoul can consume only so much at a single sitting. It makes sense to eke out the meals over a span of time. A leg one day, an arm the next, and so on. I will start with you, Mr Holmes, naturally.”
“Naturally?” my friend queried.
“Well, what is the good of having a licensed medical practitioner to hand if one does not take advantage of him? Dr Watson will perform the amputations and nurse you through the ordeal. As your oldest and dearest friend, he is sure to give you the very best care. It will be interesting to see how long you last. I cannot imagine you giving up the ghost easily, even as you are forced to watch yourself being eaten piece by piece. Let’s think… At the rate of one limb per day, that’s four days until you become a torso with a head. Then, on the fifth day, I shall lift you into the cage and let the ghoul have at you. If the good doctor rises to the challenge and you display sufficient stamina, that is the lifespan remaining to you: five very unpleasant days.”
“You utter fiend!” I cried. In my hot-temperedness, I forgot all about our escape arrangements and took a step towards Whateley. He levelled the revolver at me.
“You could still carry out your surgical duties with a bullet lodged in your leg, Doctor,” he said, “although I suspect you might prefer not to.”
“I would kill Holmes rather than allow you to inflict such a protracted torment upon him,” I said, reverting to my former position.
“It will be a test of your Hippocratic oath, that much is certain. I wonder if your impulse to keep a patient alive at all costs will override your desire to put him out of his misery. At any rate, for what it’s worth, your own death will be swifter. Once Mr Holmes is gone, what is the point in leaving you alive? I will probably just shoot you. It might take a few days for the ghoul to polish you off, but if by the end you have become a bit gamey, so what?” Whateley shrugged. “You will be that much more tender.”
“This is a particularly nasty finale you have lined up for us,” said Holmes, sounding remarkably sanguine. If what Whateley was proposing perturbed him at any level, he gave no indication. “There is a downright sadistic aspect to it which I find hard to reconcile with the facts as they stand. What have Watson and I done to deserve such a vicious Grand Guignol execution? Granted, we are capable of exposing you as a murderer, but if you intend to ensure our silence by killing us, would it not be far less bother simply to shoot us? Delaying our deaths means there is always a chance we might turn the tables on you. I see no tactical benefit in it for you, only the pleasure of watching us suffer.”
“Is that not enough?” said Whateley.
“Frankly, no. You are an intelligent man. You would not be allowing us to live, even for just a few days, unless you had some specific reason for prolonging our agony. A personal reason.”
Whateley looked cagey. “Perhaps I have, perhaps not.”
“I cannot think of a reason why Nathaniel Whateley might hate Watson and me so intently.” Holmes paused. “Nor, for that matter, can I think of a reason why Zachariah Conroy might.”
“Why bring him into it?”
“Conroy? I think you know full well why, Mr Whateley. I think you know that I have deduced by now who you really are.”
A small smile appeared upon our captor’s face. “I could scarcely have made it more obvious, Mr Holmes.”
“We read the journal, as you clearly wished us to. The rest was easy. I suppose congratulations are in order. Your procedure works after all. Not only that but you have used it to wreak a peculiarly apposite revenge upon Whateley. You are he now. You have his money, his looks, everything you envied about him. You have his body, moreover, which is as immaculate as your former body was flawed. All that Whateley took from you, you have taken back. Bravo, Mr Conroy. Bravo.”
The man who was outwardly Nathaniel Whateley but inwardly Zachariah Conroy preened. “Justice has been done,” he said. “Nate has got what he deserved, and so have I.”
“You must have toiled hard on your Intercranial Cognition Transference, in order to make it work on human beings.”
“Actually it was easier than you might think.”
“Really? Well, at the least, you must have had help carrying out the operation on yourself and Whateley.”
“I did. Superlative help. A surgical assistant of unparalleled quality.”
“Let me guess. R’luhlloig.”
Now the small smile became a large one. “Well done, Mr Holmes,” said Whateley, whom I shall hereafter refer to as Conroy, just as Holmes himself had taken to doing. “Well done indeed. You are piecing everything together exactly as I hoped you would.”
“Is that not the aim of this little game?” said Holmes. “For me to tease out the truth and for you to chart my progress?”
“It is entertaining, I must say, watching the cogs turn in that formidable brain of yours. Quite the spectator sport.”
“So you threw yourself upon the mercy of Whateley’s otherworldly confederate, the Outer God whom you had already identified as his motivator. That, I would submit, is where you have been directing your efforts since you were discharged from the Westborough State Hospital in Massachusetts. Your focus has not been on furthering your scientific researches but your arcane ones.”
“I returned to Arkham from Boston in the spring of last year and paid a series of visits to the university library,” said Conroy. “Nate, perhaps not surprisingly, had not returned the Necronomicon, for all his assurances that he would. However, there were other books in the library’s darker, dustier corners that could furnish me with the information I sought. You will be familiar with them. Von Junzt. Prinn. The Pnakotic Manuscripts. None quite as encyclopaedic as Alhazred’s tome, nor as steeped in eldritch power, but I took detailed notes and cumulatively they provided me with a framework upon which to build.”
“Then came rituals. Prostration before idols. Nights of incantation and obeisance.”
“You speak with weary disdain, as though it is an old, old story to you,” said Conroy, “but to me it was new and exciting. I treated it like a scientific discipline. I followed the wording of the rites to the letter, much as though they were the protocols of a laboratory experiment. The night I first made contact with R’luhlloig…” The American’s eyes blazed. “How terrifying it was, yet how thrilling too, in all its blasphemous transgressiveness, its glorious obscenity. Though I hail from devout Episcopalian stock, I had never had much time for God. And there I was, communing with a deity – a divine being that was not a forgiving father figure but rather a thing of calculation and appetite and cool resolve, a thing whose nature I actually found estimable. I knew R’luhlloig to be at least partly to blame for the disasters that had befallen me, but somehow that did not matter. To turn the tables on Nate by using the very same god who had been his ally – how delicious! Some nights it was all I could think about: how I would take everything from him, even R’luhlloig. Such thoughts kept me warm.”
“You embraced that which had been the agent of your downfall,” said Holmes. “There is a peculiarly self-destructive streak in you, Conroy.”
“Perhaps, Mr Holmes. Perhaps. But the moment when R’luhlloig’s voice flowed through me, as icy as the gulfs of space – it felt right. R’luhlloig seemed to know just what I wanted. I felt that he had been waiting for me to make contact, and moreover that I had, without knowing it, been waiting my entire life to contact him.”
“And that is how they ensnare you, these alien cosmic entities,” I said. “They gull you into believing you matter to them, when all they are after is whatever they can get from you. They prey upon the weak and the obsessive, and the price is eventually, inevitably, madness and death.”
“R’luhlloig is not like that,” Conroy shot back. “He is not as other gods, Outer or Old Ones or otherwise. He is not subject to cruel whims, nor is he motivelessly malignant. He is ambitious. He has plans.”
“Destructive plans.”
“Not for those who would be his acolytes.”
“But R’luhlloig already had, in Nathaniel Whateley, a loyal servant,” I said. “What would he gain from you standing in Whateley’s stead? Why help you commandeer Whateley’s body?”
“To gain himself a servant even more loyal than Whateley,” Holmes interjected. “Is that not so, Mr Conroy? A servant who has given himself wholly over to R’luhlloig, body and soul, since he has benefited so much in return. Tell me how you were able to perform the exchange, with R’luhlloig’s aid.”
“It was not so hard,” said Conroy. “Painful, yes, but not hard.”
“First you lured Whateley out of London with that journal of yours.”
“That part was ridiculously straightforward. R’luhlloig furnished me with Nate’s London address. I posted him the journal with a covering letter. ‘You had better meet with me if you know what’s good for you.’ Something to that effect. I also enclosed a map providing directions to this location. Nate fell for the ploy. He inferred that I was after money, because that was the first thing he said upon arriving. It was late in the afternoon, and he looked to have had a hard, difficult journey getting here. ‘How much did you think you might get, you pathetic little worm?’ he barked, brandishing the journal. ‘Because I warn you, I shall not pay a single penny. If extortion is what you were hoping to achieve by sending me this worthless piece of trash, then you are sorely mistaken. I would burn the damn thing if I didn’t think you had another copy squirrelled away somewhere.’ This exchange took place by the front door to the farmhouse.”
“I presume you rented this retreat and stocked it with a nightgaunt and a ghoul?”
“Correct.”
“Creatures furnished you by R’luhlloig.”
“R’luhlloig guided them to me. I taught myself the methods necessary to control the nightgaunt, while the ghoul requires somewhat less in the way of husbandry. As long as it is fed, it is content, and the cage will keep it contained. Do you or do you not want to hear about the meeting with Nate?”
“By all means continue. I apologise for the interruption.”
“Even as Nate fulminated,” Conroy said, “I played the part of meek, importunate Zachariah Conroy, claiming that I had fallen upon hard times and money was indeed my object. ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘A couple of hundred dollars perhaps, to set me back on my feet.’ This drove Nate to greater heights of indignation. ‘You have come all this way,’ said he, ‘to ask for an outrageous sum, which you must know I am not going to hand over. You have wasted your time. I always thought you naïve but never, until now, did I think you an idiot. Here, take your damn book. Never presume to trouble me again.’ Thinking me cowed, he turned to go. That was when I struck him down from behind.”
“He should not have turned his back on you.”
“He should also have looked more closely and asked himself why I was keeping my hand behind my back – a hand that held a leather sap.”
“Often the crudest methods are the most effective.”
“I coshed him hard, and down he went like a sack of coal. I dragged him indoors. When, an hour later, he came to, he was so groggy and enfeebled that I almost felt sorry for him. But I could also not help feeling triumphant. I was the dominant one in our relationship now. As I watched him writhe on the floor, I wondered why I had ever thought him so great. How could this vain peacock have dazzled me the way he did? He was all surface and no substance. Then the work commenced.”
“The operation,” said Holmes. “I am going to put forward my theory as to how R’luhlloig contributed. He took over Whateley, yes? Exerted power over him until Whateley became his puppet.”
“It was an extraordinary act of possession,” said Conroy with a nod of acknowledgement. “Nate was unable to resist. R’luhlloig infused him from crown to heel, gaining full mastery over his motor functions. Jerkily Nate rose to his feet. He could not speak. He could not do anything R’luhlloig did not want him to. And the best part of it all? The abject terror in his eyes. Nate was fully aware what was happening to him, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. It must have been like being trapped in a nightmare. I saw hurt in his expression, too. His god had turned on him. He had no idea why. How delicious I found that anguish of his. It giddied me to my core.”
“Your vengeance upon Whateley was complete.”
“Almost. Almost. First of all, I extracted the essence of Nate’s omnireticulum. I had him lie down prone and bored a drill into the base of his skull, then inserted four hypodermic needles one after another, three to inject and the last to extract. He was, of course, conscious throughout the entire procedure. R’luhlloig kept him stock-still, paralysing his muscles, so there was no screaming or squirming, but I am sure he felt every ounce of the agony.” Conroy grinned with awful relish.
“You did not leave your former body untenanted, though,” said Holmes. “This was no mere appropriation, but an exchange.”
“It was thanks to Nate that I had been left a cripple, so why not let him live for a while as I had had to for two years? Let him see how he liked it.”
“Was that not a risk? Whateley, alive, would pose a danger.”
“As weak, crippled Zachariah Conroy? Hardly. At best he might be a nuisance.”
“It would seem, then, that even rendered effectively brainless, Whateley’s body was still capable of performing the operation on you in turn. R’luhlloig was able to physically manipulate him.”
“R’luhlloig had full mastery of his nervous system,” said Conroy. “Like a hand in a glove.”
“I presume you anaesthetised yourself suitably before undergoing the procedure,” I said.
“I did not want to be fully unconscious, in case there were complications. I took a substantial draught of laudanum beforehand.”
“That would have dulled the pain but not numbed it altogether.”
“You are right. Even with the laudanum, what I went through was far from pleasant. It was, in point of fact, horrendous. But I endured it. I knew what this pain was going to buy me. The reward was worth the price.”
Conroy paused a moment, reflecting on the experience.
“To feel one’s inner self slowly being eroded,” he said, “one’s life and memories slipping away…” He shook his head. “I cannot truly put it into words. It was as though all that I was, the sum of my time on earth, was telescoping down, with a blackness encroaching upon me from all sides. I imagine actual death is not dissimilar. With each injection of Conroy’s Solution, I lessened. Then, with the withdrawal of my omnireticulum’s contents, I ceased to be anything recognisably ‘me’. I was formless. I had become chaos. I was a million moving parts, all whirling around and shooting off in different directions. I sensed that if I did not hold myself together somehow, I would dissipate entirely. I would lose coherence and never re-coalesce.”
“Why was Junior Brenneman not able to maintain integrity of mind when transferred into another body, and you were?” Holmes asked. “Does it have something to do with the desirability of the body in question? Junior found himself within a Negro. To one such as him, that must have been intolerable. You, on the other hand, have been installed into the physical frame of a figure whom you once admired and aspired to be like, and in some obscure way still do.”
“A nice analysis,” said Conroy, “psychologically valid, but wrong. The solution is both simpler and less mundane. R’luhlloig made the difference. R’luhlloig’s power was the glue that kept me from falling to pieces. What my own science lacked, he provided through divine might. He cupped me in his hands and sustained me while in serum form, so that I did not drift apart. Then, when I was inserted into Nate’s omnireticulum, I soon began to regain a sense of self.”
“Might I ask how the serum was injected into Whateley’s omnireticulum?” I said.
“Doctor, you are a fund of good, pragmatic questions.”
“Your former body was unoccupied. For Whateley to reach round to the back of his own head with the hypodermic needle containing your essence and use it accurately would have been nigh on impossible.”
“R’luhlloig had him thrust the needle up through the roof of his mouth.” Conroy mimed the action with a forefinger between his lips. “It penetrated the soft palate and up into the omnireticulum. The back of my throat is somewhat sore, even now. For the first day or so I could hardly speak. But again, as with the pain of the procedure, I felt this bearable and worthwhile. I was Nate Whateley! For ever after I would have the prestige of his family name. I would have his background, his finances, his allure to women, the lot. Zachariah Conroy was no more, and good riddance. He had only ever been a disappointment. From now on I could slip into the life of someone who had the world at his feet, rather than ploughing on as before –disfigured, missing a hand, a paltry loner.”
“There followed the final twist of the knife,” said Holmes. “Installing Whateley’s essence in your vacated body.”
“Another reason why I could not sedate myself. The job needed to be done quickly, while the serum was still potent and before the hole drilled in the back of Nate’s neck closed up. Thereafter all I had to do was sit back and wait for him to come round. I can assure you, his first whimpers of distress when he realised what I had done to him – it was music to my ears. Then he begged me to kill him, in that halting, clumsy baby-blather that was the closest he could now get to speech. His mind had withered during the transference, like Junior’s, for he had not had R’luhlloig to help him. Most of him had been lost. Yet he was self-aware enough to implore me to do away with him, and I? I refused. I would not show him that kindness. Not yet.”
Conroy exhaled a sigh that I can only call ecstatic. “And that is my story,” he concluded. “The tale of a man who plumbed the depths but crawled back out to scale the heights.”
“It is undoubtedly a useful coda to the text of your journal,” Holmes averred, “but it is not the full story, is it? There is more.”
Conroy arched an eyebrow. “Pray tell what I have omitted.”
“R’luhlloig will have demanded something of you in exchange for his bountifulness. I wondered whether it might be your services as a spy, but I am unconvinced by that idea. I think he would want something more intrinsically valuable, something he could obtain from you that he could from no other.”
“Why don’t you elucidate, Mr Holmes? Since you seem to believe you have all the answers.”
“Not all the answers,” said Holmes. “I am conscious that R’luhlloig has a specific disliking for me. He, through your auspices, has arranged it so that Dr Watson and I are your prisoners and that I am to have a cruel and unusual death visited upon me. Was it R’luhlloig who proposed you release Whateley, the occupant of your former body, and allow him to run free?”
“What if it was?” said Conroy coyly.
“By convincing you to turn Whateley loose, R’luhlloig was laying a trail. He would have known that Whateley would be found. It does seem surprising that this wretched figure, so addle-witted he was barely able to string a sentence together, could have contrived to escape from under your nose. A more credible explanation is that he did not. You let him go. He then became the first in a chain of clues leading me inexorably to your door. A naked man, seemingly insane, gabbling away in R’lyehian? Of course he would come to the notice of Sherlock Holmes. That was your intention, or rather R’luhlloig’s, and I am ashamed that I did not realise it sooner.”
“You are not infallible. Who is?”
“Yes, but I hold myself to a higher standard than most. You dangled a hook into the water, with Whateley as the bait, knowing that I would swim by and bite.”
“What tantalises Sherlock Holmes? What can he not resist? A mystery.”
“Then, feeling a tug on the line and needing to reel me in, you despatched your nightgaunt to retrieve Whateley from Bethlem and bring him back to you for disposal. I continued to follow the clues, and here I am. Here we are.” Holmes turned to me, head bent in remorse. “I am sorry, Watson, old friend. It is all too embarrassingly apparent that I have blundered. I simply did not intuit the deeper machinations at work.”
“It is not your fault,” I said. “I daresay the upshot would have been much the same.”
“The trap was well concealed,” Holmes continued, still overcome with chagrin. “But I should have spotted it. Am I forgiven?”
“You are.”
I should perhaps have been more reproachful than I was. Largely, however, I was focused on our imminent escape. I was waiting for Holmes to give the prearranged signal, so that I could put my part of the plan into action. All other considerations were secondary.
“Thank you.” Holmes turned back to Conroy. “So, you have obligingly shown your cards, and I am now under no illusion that I have been outplayed. I should like, though, to have a word with your partner in crime. I have dealt with the monkey; now I wish to speak to the organ grinder.”
Conroy gave a little start, then nodded. “R’luhlloig told me you might make such a request.”
“It is not too much to ask. I believe R’luhlloig is as keen to renew acquaintance as I am.”
Renew acquaintance? I wondered if I had misheard. Had Holmes had some previous interaction with the Hidden Mind? If so, I was ignorant of it. Until this adventure began, this particular Outer God had been unknown to us.
Conroy laughed. “Very well then. I will overlook being referred to as a ‘monkey’ and permit you an audience with R’luhlloig. He will speak through me. Fair warning, though. The gun will remain trained upon you, and my finger will not leave the trigger. No sudden movements, please, and no tricks.”
“I would not dream of it,” said my companion.
Conroy steeled himself. Then, all at once, he stiffened. His face took on a different cast, becoming paler and weirdly attenuated. His eye sockets seemed to deepen, his brow to enlarge. His head hunched forward upon his neck, while his shoulders sagged somewhat.
The transformation took no more than a few seconds, and by the end we were looking at the same man, yet superimposed upon him there was another, one who was not as erect-spined and handsome as Nathaniel Whateley and who gazed upon us with a glittering-eyed intensity that was thoroughly disconcerting. This was neither Conroy nor Whateley, but a third party, an eldritch god incarnated in human form.
And then he spoke.
And then everything that was hitherto murky became crystal clear.
Appallingly so.
