“Calm?” asked Mitchell. “What have you got to be calm about? You have been an idiot, led straight here by the nose, a mindless oaf who scarcely warrants his reputation.”
Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that.
“Mindless oaf? Surely not. There has been little opportunity to exercise my brain on this particular case, I grant you, but that can hardly be taken as evidence of stupidity.
“Though I grant you I should have seen the pattern days ago. A greyhound trainer and a Parisian furrier go missing then Andre Le Croix, the chef perhaps most famous for his foie gras, the recipe for which proudly reads like a torture menu for the unfortunate animal that goes into making it.” Watson thinks I pay no attention at all, this is far from true. I listen, I just do not always
care.
“Someone was clearly targeting people known for their mistreatment of animals. I presume it was Le Croix who ended up in a sack on the floor of the Bouquet of Lilies?”
Mitchell was clearly somewhat thrown by this sudden change in tempo, an effect I always find endlessly pleasurable. “That was all that was left of him by the time my friends here had dined on him.”
“Poetic I’m sure, I suppose we should be thankful you didn’t try to skin the furrier but merely settled for chaining him up and torturing him for a while.”
“We let him off lightly.”
“Oh shut up!” I shouted. I don’t anger often but this fool, this second-rate scientist with his hand-me-down philosophies and theories, was really beginning to get my dander up.
“So much for keeping calm,” I heard Inspector Mann mutter. I suppose he had a point.
“You are a charlatan!” I told Mitchell. “You claim to be fighting on the side of animals and yet you commit the most unspeakable acts upon them.”
“I improve them!” he screamed. “I fulfil their potential.”
“Really?” I looked to Kane. “What it must be to be so fulfilled.”
He growled and stepped in front of his master, his “father”, still as loyal as ever, whatever he might have told Watson and I.
“I am the equal of you,” he insisted, drool forming around his jaw.
“Hardly, though we might have a similar skill for fetching sticks, I’ll grant you that.”
I reached into my pocket for the whistle I had purloined off Perry but he had been thinking the same thing. He grabbed my wrist, pulled my hand out of the pocket and took the whistle himself. He dropped it to the floor and stamped on it.
“We’ll have no more of that,” he said.
“I suppose to have fallen foul of it a third time would have been rather embarrassing,” I said, only too aware that even if I could have incapacitated Kane the rest of the beasts would have remained fighting-fit. “It doesn’t bode well for your little sideline does it, really?” I looked to Mitchell. “I presume his criminal activities have been helping to fund your hobby? Just think what you could have achieved with an intelligent crook at your disposal, no doubt by now you would have managed to build an actual army rather than just skulking in the sewers with a handful of mongrels. Like
an impoverished farmer with a grudge.”
“Holmes,” said Challenger. “Not that I disagree old chap but you might want to mind your tongue.”
“Wise advice,” said Mitchell, “or one of my friends will bite it off.”
“Very well,” I replied, “let’s get on with whatever lunatic plan you have in mind. Taking over the country? Killing all the no-tails? Installing scratching posts on all street corners?”
Mitchell clenched his piggy little fists but just about managed to stay in control. Unfortunately. It was probably extremely foolish of me but I was intrigued to see him reduced to his animal state.
“Lock them up with their friend,” he said. “We’ll see them on the operating table soon enough.”
“Only a fool would operate on Professor Challenger!” bawled the man himself. “It would be like repainting Ming china.”
“Come along, Professor,” I told him. “There’s time yet to impress your genius upon them.”
We were led through the warehouse and I paid special attention to my surroundings, noting Mitchell’s equipment and how many creatures we had to contend with. On the latter point, things were not far from my desultory comment to Mitchell. For all his grand talk, he was little more than a crackpot with dangerous pets. Once Mycroft arrived, we’d certainly have no problem in handling them.
We passed his surgery and I slowed my pace in order to take in as much detail as I could. The rest of the warehouse had been—much like Mitchell’s brain—little more than empty chambers littered with animal faeces—this was a hive of order and efficiency.
“You admire my laboratory, Mr Holmes?” he asked, noticing my attention.
“It is at least lacking in bones and straw compared to the rest of
your home from home,” I replied and took the opportunity to walk in and have a quick look around.
“Come away from there!” he shouted. “You’ll see it soon enough when you’re underneath my knife!”
I stepped out and he made a considerable show of locking the door behind me. I continued along the passageway to the room that was to be our gaol cell.
Mitchell unlocked the door, threw it open and shouted at us to enter.
We did so with no more complaint.
“Holmes?” said the welcome voice of my Watson. “I might have hoped to see you on better terms.”
“Ah!” I replied. “Is that you, Watson? Not the most convivial of surroundings is it?”
“Damned disgrace,” Challenger shouted. “Treated like a blasted animal!”
“If only his intentions were that kind,” said Watson.
He proceeded to tell us of the fate of Lord Newman, a further depressing note to the case. Not only had it descended into nothing more interesting than the hunt for a lunatic, that lunatic had already managed to kill his most distinguished captive. Well, second most distinguished.
“I can’t really see a way out of our situation,” continued the ever-fretful Watson. “He has an army of those beasts to fight against, we’re outnumbered, overpowered and trapped here in the dark.”
“I know,” I told him, with a smile that he could not hope to see in the darkness. “I’ve got him just where I want him!”
Which is when Carruthers started blowing the place up, providing a most exemplary distraction.
“I don’t suppose anyone has anything long and thin I might use to pick the lock?” I asked.
“Pick the lock,” shouted Challenger. “What for?”
There was a resounding crack and the door swung open. I walked out, glancing at the imprint of his size fourteen boot on the paintwork. “You’ve been in Peru recently I perceive,” I mentioned, noting the highly unusual colour of the clay deposit he left an inch to the right of the lock.
“Indeed,” he replied, “it was much nicer than this damnable place.”
“Then let us take our leave.”
Walking back out into the warehouse was an assault on our senses. The explosions continued and the animals were in a wild panic, screaming and howling as they ran to and fro trying to escape the loud noise and hails of brick.
“My first London investigation,” I said, “and I’ll be blown up before I see the end of it.”
“Sorry to have dragged you into this,” said Watson, over-thinking things as usual.
“Don’t worry,” I told him, “at least it will save me having to do the paperwork.”
“What have you done?” Mitchell was screaming. “What have you done?”
He ran to the laboratory, Holmes and I hard on his heels.
There was a roar from the end of the corridor and Kane stood there, his mouth wide open as he growled his animal hatred at us.
“Gun!” shouted Watson. Holmes, not even breaking his stride,
threw his revolver to him and darted into the laboratory after Mitchell.
“Stand down!” Watson shouted, pointing the gun at Kane. “Or I’ll drop you where you stand.”
Suddenly the wall to his left cracked as another explosion took its effect. He fell to his right, the gun tumbling from his hands.
“Watson!” Leaving Holmes, I ran to help him but the explosions had taken their toll on the structure of the old warehouse and the crack in the wall was only the beginning. With a soft crunch, the ceiling sagged and before I could get to the fallen doctor, there was a hail of bricks and plaster as the lot came caving in before me. “Watson!”
“He’s a goner, man,” said Challenger behind me. “If the bricks didn’t get him, that damned dog soon will.”
The passageway was impassable, we were sealed in and Watson was sealed out.
Mitchell ran straight towards his laboratory and I could only assume he had something in there he considered potent enough to help him regain the upper hand. I therefore felt it best to follow.
He struggled with the keys as the explosions rang out throughout the warehouse, but wrestled the door open and dashed inside.
I noticed Kane appear at the end of the hallway. I really didn’t have the enthusiasm to be able to deal with both of them. Isn’t it precisely for situations like this that you come in company?
“Gun!” Watson shouted and I took great pleasure in throwing it to him as I continued in my pursuit of Mitchell. Behind me I was aware of the collapse of part of the ceiling and wall, hardly surprising given the age of the building. I’d placed the majority of it at close to a hundred-and-twenty years old, though some of the bricks had dated from as far back as 1763. Given the temperature of the last few winters and the fact that the place had not been looked after for some years, it must have been fragile indeed. I wasn’t aware that part of it had fallen on Watson. After all, I can hardly be expected to notice
everything.
“Come now, Mitchell,” I said, stepping into the doorway of his laboratory. “There’s no earthly use in running, we have reinforcements on the way.”
“Who says I’m running?” he replied, grabbing a hypodermic syringe.
“This is a concentrated dose of my serum,” he explained, rolling up his sleeve, “a chemical capable of turning me into a creature far more powerful than the rest of your pathetic species.”
“Up until it kills you,” I reminded him.
“Not me,” he insisted, plunging the needle into his arm, “I’m too strong, I will develop! I will evolve!” He began to swell, his skin reddening. It was almost as if his madness was taking on physical shape, turning him into a flesh and bone illustration of his own anger and violence. The pig cowl stretched and distorted as his head continue to expand beneath it. The veins were rising on his forearms, blue lines as thick and jumbled as a map of the Underground trains.
“Evolve!!!” it shouted, the voice even more slurred than normal.
I glanced at the door and noticed he had left the keys in the lock. Evolution will never be a replacement for intelligence.
“Evolve your way out of a locked room then,” I suggested, stepping outside and locking the door behind me.
He immediately began pounding on it as I walked away but to no avail; it was a stout door. I joined Mann and Challenger in front of the pile of bricks and mortar that had once been the floor above.
“Watson was caught in it,” said Challenger. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I replied, filling my pipe, “my Watson’s a damn sight harder to kill than that.”
The damned sky fell in on me and for a moment all was noise, pain and dust, then blackness as I passed out of consciousness.
The next thing I knew there was a pair of monstrous hands on my lapels, and I was being pulled out of the rubble.
“No,” said Kane, “not like that. That would be too easy.”
He threw me away from the collapsed ceiling, tossing me to the ground at the far end of the passageway.
My head was spinning and it was so hard to focus, I could feel blood washing the plaster away from my temple and cheek. I was no doubt concussed and would need several stitches. If I was lucky enough to get away with no more wounds that is, something that seemed incredibly unlikely given the attitude of the brute staring down at me.
“Father says we should be ourselves,” he said, “feed our animal side.” He snarled. “Very well. Run!”
I didn’t need telling twice, I got to my feet and, shakily, ran out of
what was left of the passage and into the open warehouse.
All around was panic and screaming, some of the animals were cowering, some were running in circles. Not so Kane, Kane was in full control.
“Run, man!” he shouted, the words tapering into a howl like that of a wolf. “I wish to hunt!”
I looked around desperately for a weapon but could see nothing. I ran for the stairs that would lead me up to the main entrance, unknowingly passing right by Carruthers and Wiggins on the other side of the wall as they encouraged Mycroft and his security officers up from the underground entrance.
The stairs were hard going, my legs aching terribly as I forced them to move faster up each flight. Finally I was on the ground floor, and I made straight for the door.
Kane followed me outside, his feet pounding on the road as he chased me down the street. I risked a look over my shoulder and saw he had reverted even further. Dropping forward he was loping along on all fours, tongue lolling from between his teeth as he ran.
“Kill you!” he shouted, his voice even more of a canine howl now.
I ran towards the sound of traffic. As much as I didn’t want this thing to harm others I would stand a better chance of dealing with it myself if I could only get into the open.
I emerged close to the Euston Road, Kane at my heels.
“Kill you! Bite you! Suck your bones!” Kane lashed out at me with one of his massive hands and he caught me on the shoulder, sending me tumbling into the gutter.
He rose up and pounded his massive hands on his chest, howling up at the night sky.
I got to my feet, shuffling towards the main road.
“No,” he said, “no more run.”
He leapt for me and I managed to dart to one side, so he collided with a pair of bicycles chained up against a railing. He roared in frustration as the pedals and spokes dug into him. I kept running towards the main road, aware that I had bought myself maybe a few extra seconds, not much, but possibly enough.
I heard the wrenching of metal behind me, followed by a savage barking sound, and then that gallop of his fists bouncing off the road as he ran on all fours. I was scouring the ground as I ran, desperate to spot something I could use—my eyes alighted on the very thing. A dirty child’s ball left in the gutter. And with it a desperate idea!