“I dare say all of us will have our work cut out managing that,” said Johnson, “but then, I never did take to the quiet life.”
“Dr Watson not here?” asked Wiggins.
“Not as yet,” I admitted. “No doubt he is sulking somewhere as he is wont to do. We’ll see him soon enough. Let me give you both some idea of what faces us.”
I prepared to give them all the details currently at our disposal. My brother might have wished me to show more discretion but knowledge is the most important thing in the world and I wouldn’t dream of letting them go into battle without it. However, I was stopped in my briefing by the sound of the bell.
Billy brought in Inspector George Mann, thankfully saving me the need to run through the details a second time.
“I am glad to have you with us,” I told him, having renewed our brief acquaintance. “No doubt Watson will be along shortly. He was an excellent advocate on your behalf.”
“Pleased to hear it,” he said and settled down with Johnson and Wiggins to listen to my summary of the case.
“I can see why the doctor was playing his cards close to his chest,” said Mann, once I had finished, “it certainly is a potentially inflammatory affair. If the details of this were to be leaked to the press …”
“Indeed.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “The last thing we need is the involvement of more reporters.”
The joke seemed to pass above their heads, a not uncommon experience for me.
“There would be rioting in the streets,” Johnson said. “People would go mad.”
“I sometimes think very little encouragement is needed on that score,” Mann said.
Wiggins nodded and gave a wry smile. “You’re not wrong there. People like a ruckus and no mistake.”
“We’ll have enough of one by ourselves tonight,” said Mann. “And I for one expect trouble from our guide as well as the man he’s leading us to.”
“You’re quite right,” I said, “and we all need to remember it. There is no doubting that, whatever happens, it benefits Kane were none of us to come out of those sewers alive.”
“You think he intends to double-cross us?” asked Johnson.
“Most certainly,” I replied. “I’d be exceptionally surprised if he didn’t.”
“All good fun,” he replied, “and I’d better mind myself and all.” He pulled a thick black stocking from his coat pocket. “On the slightest off-chance we do manage to survive the night, I’d better make sure the bugger don’t recognise me.” He pulled the stocking over his head. “My life wouldn’t be worth thruppence if it got around that I’d been fraternising with you lot!”
I confess it often slipped my mind that Johnson took a terrible risk simply being seen with me. He truly was a man from another world.
Downstairs the bell rang. Given the length and stridency of the tone it could only be Challenger.
Billy answered it and the professor’s voice echoed up the stairway like a sergeant major issuing the call to charge.
I checked the time. Kane would soon be here, but where was Watson?
That answer came soon enough when Billy entered alongside Challenger. “Telegram for you, Sir,” he said, handing it over and stepping as far away from Challenger as he could. It was clear he was quite terrified of the man. I have noticed people are often intimidated by such physical giants, and I always think it strange. What do any of us have to fear from brute strength? That’s what fire pokers and revolvers are for. It’s a powerful brain that should scare us.
I opened the telegram. It read:
HOLMES I HAVE YOUR FRIEND [STOP] HE WILL BE HELD
AS
INSURANCE AGAINST YOUR BEHAVIOUR [STOP] DO NOT MAKE ME TURN HIM INTO SOMETHING HE WILL REGRET [STOP]
“Like a confirmed bachelor, perhaps?” I muttered.
“What’s that, Holmes?” asked Challenger.
It was good that he addressed me by name as, given the volume of his inquiry, I might otherwise have assumed he was asking the question of Mr Goss, the gentleman who lived three doors down.
“It is our enemy playing his hand,” I said and offered him the telegram to pass around the room.
“What are we going to do now?” Johnson asked. “Surely we can’t call the hunt off?”
“Indeed not,” I agreed. “That is precisely what we can’t do.”
Kane didn’t keep us long. It was nine o’clock precisely when the door bell rang and we once more heard Billy move to answer it.
“Now, Gentlemen,” I said, “keep your eyes open and your wits sharp, our enemies are at our throats from this moment forth.”
We listened to Kane’s heavy feet on the stairs, Johnson making sure his disguise was safely in place. The door opened and, again, I was struck by the daunting stature of the creature that filled the doorframe.
“A party of adventurers indeed,” he said, a harsh sniff emanating from beneath the heavy veil as he set his sensitive nose to work. “Might I be introduced? I like to know the names of gentlemen I am expected to blithely trust my life to.”
He might brag of his intelligence but he could split an infinitive with the best of them.
“They might reasonably say the same thing,” I replied, “to a man in a disguise as heavy and theatrical as yours.”
“I hide nothing,” he replied, stepping into the room and pulling away his hat and veil to reveal the dog’s head beneath.
There was a drawing in of breath as they took him in. Precisely the effect he had hoped for of course.
I had described him accurately but words could not convey the monstrousness of Kane’s appearance. I had discussed the resonance and timbre of his voice, even speculated how it must be produced considering the limited dog’s palate, but to hear it was something else again. I told them precisely how many teeth he had, and their approximate length, but to see them glint in the lamplight was far more inspiring. Like good opera and a perfectly cooked chateaubriand steak, Kane was a thing to be experienced rather than discussed.
“Astounding!” Challenger said, stepping closer. “You, Sir, are a positive miracle. I have never seen the like.”
“After tonight you never will again,” Kane replied. “Kindly keep your distance! I am not a museum exhibit to be gawped at.”
Challenger raised a bushy eyebrow. “I was hardly gawping, Sir. I am Professor George Edward Challenger, a foremost authority on … Well, almost anything you might choose to mention. So when you have my attention you might bear in mind it is the attention of the very best.”
“Never heard of you,” Kane replied. “But then I have very little time for experts. Their inability to agree the truth makes me want to chew their faces off.” He looked to Johnson. “And what facial non-conformity are you trying to hide, eh? Given what you see before you, you must be a very ugly man indeed to stay so bashfully covered.”
“I’ve had a few complaints in my time, it’s true,” Johnson said.
“But it’s my anonymity rather than your comfort that I’m trying to preserve.”
“We all have our secrets, Kane,” I said. “And the better they are maintained, the less we need to worry about each other.”
“But you already know all my secrets I think,” said Kane.
“I doubt that,” I told him. “I doubt that very much.”
“I’m sure we have better things to do than stand here talking,” Mann said. “Might I suggest we get on with them?”
“Quite so,” I agreed. “I suggest you let us know the area we’re heading in and I’ll have Billy commandeer us a pair of cabs.”
“King’s Cross,” Kane said. “We can walk from there.”
“Very well,” I replied, before calling to Billy.
Kane turned to Mann. “And who are you?” he asked. “You have the unwelcome smell of the constabulary to you. I made it clear to Mr Holmes that I didn’t wish there to be any official law enforcement here this evening.”
“Then he followed your wishes,” Mann replied. “I’m a private agent, much like Wiggins here. Though I do most of my business in the country.”
“Hmm …” Kane gave another loud sniff. “I can smell it on you— greenery and mud. I don’t like it.”
“Then I shan’t make the mistake of inviting you to tea,” Mann replied.
I stepped into Watson’s room, helping myself to his revolver. If the night went as I hoped, I would be able to hand it to him in person.
Billy called up to us that he had secured transport. Cautiously, with Kane back beneath his veil, we made our way down onto the street.
I travelled with Kane in one cab while the rest followed on behind. I was unwilling to let him out of my sight and it gave the others a chance to converse more openly. In actuality this probably meant that they had to listen to Challenger talk at them. I wondered if I might be fortunate enough to discover that Johnson had been forced to throttle him before we reached our destination. It would certainly allow the rest of the evening to pass more peacefully. Sadly, this was not to be the case.
Once we arrived at King’s Cross, Kane led us behind the station and into the warren of backstreets that huddle around the railway tracks.
Shortly, we descended to the track itself, walking carefully beside the rails. Every few minutes a train would pass, pistons hammering in a percussive, chaotic row.
“Mind yourselves,” Kane said, as if we needed warning. “It gets darker along here where the cut deepens and the trains will rip you
from your feet without their drivers even noticing. We are nothing but flies buzzing around an elephant’s ear.” He had a rather poetic turn of phrase when he turned his canine mind to it.
“I saw a man lose his arm once,” Johnson said. “Had too much to drink hadn’t ’e? Fell down next to the track, stuck his arms out to stop his face from hitting the ground. Boom!” He mimed a train sweeping past. “Bad timing and the 13.14 to Colchester had it off just below the shoulder. Didn’t even slow down, probably had no idea it had happened. The bloke in question was a bit slow on the uptake himself, mind you, only noticed a problem when he shook his fists at the driver and found himself one short.”
Wiggins laughed at that just as another train made its deafening way past.
After a few more minutes, Kane halted the party and pointed at a drainage cover in the ground.
“Our entrance,” he announced, pulling a short crowbar from a pocket inside his coat.
“Allow me,” said Challenger, taking the crowbar from him and flipping up the drain cover as if it weighed nothing. He handed the crowbar back to Kane, smiling. “It’s not just my brain that’s powerful,” he said.
“No,” Kane agreed. “Your personality is just as indomitable.”
“Now then,” said Wiggins, “let’s try and keep this as friendly as possible, shall we? No doubt there’s enough down there waiting to do us harm without our fighting amongst ourselves.”
Kane didn’t reply just gestured towards the uncovered hole. “After you.”
Wiggins looked to the hole, and the top of the ladder just visible within it, and sighed. He glanced at me, looking for the
confirmation to go ahead. Naturally I gave it.
Mann followed Wiggins, then Johnson, then Challenger— somewhat irritated at having to wait his turn. Finally there was only Kane and I left on the surface.
“I think you should go next,” I said to Kane, “just so you can tell them which way we should be walking.”
“Still don’t trust me, eh?” Kane replied.
“Naturally not,” I replied. “I’m not an idiot after all.”
Kane offered that disturbing grin of his, a smile that spoke of animal hunger rather than humour. “We’ll see about that,” he replied, and began to climb down the ladder.
I descended after him.
Descending into the tunnel we were hit by the oppressive air, not just the reek of the sewer water that rushed by but also the heavy sense of age and damp. The world from above rarely made itself felt in these long chambers. Fresh air, the cool, clean scent of a winter’s breeze, these were things that had never intruded down here. This was a world of waste and rot, Moreau’s world.
“I’ve been in some unpleasant places in my time,” said Challenger, “landscapes terrible and dangerous. I have choked on the sulphurous outpourings of an active volcano, the fetid aroma of freshly gutted buffalo, the assault on the nostrils that is Delhi at high summer. And yet this is undoubtedly the most foul smelling, and unappealing.”
“We are not here to act as tourists,” Kane said. “We are here for business.”
“And dark business at that,” agreed Wiggins.
“On the subject of which—” There was the scrape of a match and Johnson lifted up an illuminated lantern “- We’ll be needing a bit of extra light.”
“If you can’t manage without,” Kane hissed. “Though I would have preferred not to present such an obvious target. They will see us coming from some distance away.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t see for a foot in front of my face without it,” Johnson said. “So we’ll have to manage, wont we?”
I could see Kane’s point but thought it particularly ill-advised to stumble around in the dark. “We cannot manage without light for now,” I said, “so we might as well accept the fact and get moving.”
“Many expeditions are a matter of compromise,” Challenger said as we began to work our way along the tunnel. “I remember, during a particularly arduous trek along the banks of the Amazon, I was forced to …”
“Must he talk all the time?” said Kane. “You can hear his bellowing for miles, I’m sure.”
Of course, I agreed with Kane on this point, not that Challenger gave me time to admit as much.
“Right!” he shouted. “That’s it! I have been more than tolerant of your disgraceful behaviour, you blasted mongrel!” He raised his fists. “We will not go a step further until I have pounded a little of the insolence out of you.”
“Gentlemen!” I whispered. “Need I remind you that this is an occasion for stealth and discretion?”
“Discretion my sainted arse!” Challenger roared. “I want to box the ears of this dog-headed cur! This mangy upstart!”
Kane reached out and lashed at Challenger with one leather-mittened paw.
There was the click of a revolver being cocked and both Mann
and Wiggins were pointing their guns at Kane.
“Calm down,” said Mann, “before you jeopardise everything.”