WHEN MARY MORSTAN ARRIVED THAT EVENING, WHAT A strange trio we made. I suppose I was the most mundane-looking of the three. Though pale and trembling, my appearance was generally acceptable for the theater and it might easily be assumed I was naught but a London gentleman suffering from some minor infirmity. Of course, hidden beneath my clothes was the truth: I was a London gentleman suffering from mystic self-poisoning, who stood on the very brink of irreversible damage to almost every one of his internal organs.
Mary wore the same nondescript dress she’d been in earlier. However, she must have taken to heart my warning that Holmes and I might be unwilling to shoot her mysterious benefactor, even if she commanded it. Miss Morstan seemed to have grown suspicious bulges in both sleeves, one in her right boot and an alarmingly huge one in her handbag. My personal suspicion was that she had gone straight back home and ransacked her employers’ house for whatever weaponry she could find. Let no aspersions ever be cast upon Mary’s resourcefulness: she seemed to have dug up half an armory and strapped herself for battle.
So, there we were. I was sick, Mary Morstan was prepared to kill and kill and kill, and Holmes had a paper hat.
We hailed a cab.
On the drive, I think I must have seemed distant and desultory. In truth, I was simply exhausted. Mary seemed distracted. She didn’t know what situation she was walking into, but she was resolved to walk out laden with loot. Holmes was chatty. He kept holding forth on the virtues of used newsprint as the basis for haberdashery, and how—given the unknowability of the night’s events—certain people might feel better about things if they held hands.
I gave him a warning look. I think he was unsettled that I had not expressed my usual interest in our female client. And… well, I confess it was a failing of mine. As Holmes peppered his conversation with observations that the road was bumpy, and wouldn’t the carriage handle better if Mary and I were to sit a bit closer, I thought I read a dueling uncertainty in his features. I think he was wondering if my lack of interest was due to my feeble physical state, or my agitation that he had tried to turn me out of 221B. Indeed, either of those two might well have explained it, but Holmes was overlooking a third, overriding motive.
Mary was just awful.
I had no desire to spend an extra instant in her company, more than the evening’s business demanded. True, I was glad she’d sought our help, for I needed something to distract Holmes from my expulsion and a chance to remind him that he could not manage these little affairs without me. Yet my only desire was to bring the mystery to a satisfactory conclusion as quickly as I might.
Preferably without allowing Mary to murder anybody.
No sooner had we alighted outside the theater, than a street urchin gave a loud whistle to a shadowy figure who sat waiting in a four-wheeler directly across from us. The man said something to his driver and—in only the time it took to make an inadvisable U-turn in evening theater traffic—the carriage pulled up in front of us. The door opened to reveal a hard-looking man in his late thirties. He was not particularly large, but had a deformed cheekbone, two cauliflower ears and enough facial scarring to prove to even the most inexperienced observer that he must have had quite the career as a prizefighter.
“Miss Mary Morstan?” the man asked.
“I am,” she replied. “And these are my two escorts, Dr. Something-or-other and Warlock Holmes.”
“Holy Hell!” the man screamed, jumping back into the depths of the carriage. “Johnny, get us out of here!”
“Now just a moment, my good man,” said Holmes, raising one finger. “Miss Morstan has broken none of your injunctions. I am not a member of the regular police force, nor have I ever been. True, I may have aided them in their investigations a few times. And… er… I may have been the subject of their investigations a number of times as well. But, so long as no harm is threatened to Mary Morstan, I shall act as a simple observer.”
“Promise?” asked the ex-fighter, wide-eyed and gripping the carriage door with white-knuckled fingers.
“I promise,” said Holmes.
The man licked his lips and glanced around, nervously. “Well… all right, but I’ll have my pistol drawn and on you the whole time, so don’t try nuffin’ funny.”
“Fair enough,” said Holmes. He climbed up into the four-wheeler, sending our mysterious contact shuffling back into the far corner. Holmes made sure to sit on the same seat with him, leaving the rear one for me and Mary, hoping—no doubt—that we might feel the need to snuggle.
As we settled in, the ex-fighter fumbled about in his pockets, then produced a small revolver, which he pointed at… well, mostly at Holmes. His hands trembled so badly that he waved the thing back and forth across half the compartment. He also took the opportunity to feebly knock against the roof and bleat, “Johnny! You got to… get us home… Move, Johnny… Johnny, please!”
I raised my eyebrows at Holmes. “Your reputation precedes you, it would seem.”
“Well,” he said, with a little shrug, “I’ve been operating in London for some time, so word has gotten about in… you know… certain circles.”
It was not the most jovial carriage ride I have ever enjoyed. I tried to engage our mysterious escort in conversation, if only to calm his nerves. I had the distinct impression that somebody was sure to be accidentally shot if I didn’t. We got a little information out of him—for example, that his name was Williams, he was the former lightweight champion of England, and he had never done anything wicked, so there was certainly no need for Holmes to punish him—yet he insisted that he was under strict orders to let his employer explain everything.
The evening traffic slowed us, until we cleared Vauxhall Bridge. From there we headed southeast at a good pace, through Stockwell, finally stopping outside an ornate house on Coldharbour Lane. Williams practically kicked the carriage door open and indicated, with a squeal, that we should disembark.
We made our way to the door, Mary in the lead and Williams hanging back a dozen feet, his eyes locked warily on Holmes. There was no bell, but the door had a corroded brass knocker, which Mary used to deliver a firm, businesslike rap. Almost instantly, the door was swept open by an aging Indian servant in a yellow turban. An overwhelming miasma of stinking vapor rolled out from behind him, stinging our eyes and sending us into fits of coughing. For an instant, I thought I was being poisoned. A good deal of my mistrust was due to the man’s yellow headwear, which I knew to be the identifying mark of the murderous Thuggee gang. Yet, even as my lungs became accustomed to the initial onslaught of the house’s atmosphere, I realized his turban wasn’t so much yellow as yellowed—perhaps the natural reaction of any white fabric to such foul air. Indeed, the man himself seemed to have suffered the same. His eyes were bloodshot, yellow and dark-circled with stress and fatigue. He was just opening his mouth—whether to offer welcome or explanation, I will never know—when a high, whining voice from deep within the house called, “Ah! Hew! They are arrived at last! Oh, khitmutgar! Khitmutgar! You must show them to me at once! No delays, now! No delays! Mew, hew, hew…”