Eight Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Page 17

  “Clay?” he asked. I didn’t believe that he expected an answer, so I remained silent as he replaced the vial and continued to stare into the case.

  Then, just as I was certain he would turn in disgust and leave that accursed place, Holmes laid hand on a small leather-bound volume. Pulling it nearer to the light, he flipped open the covers, which had nothing upon them but a few characters rendered in Hebrew. Holmes’s brow furrowed, and he flipped the pages rapidly, grunting under his breath.

  I glanced over his shoulder as he flipped through the pages. The script was coarse, and though I’m no linguist, I saw what seemed to be alternating lines of Hebrew and some antiquated form of Arabic. There were notes scribbled in the margins. I could make out none of it, but Holmes seemed to be devouring it all.

  “There’s no time to waste, Watson,” he said at last, replacing the book where he’d found it and tidying up the room just enough so that a cursory glance would show no evidence of our presence. “We must hide ourselves.”

  We moved none too soon. Holmes had just switched off the lights, and dragged me down the hall and through another door when we heard the grate of an iron key turning slowly in the lock. We could just make out the cursing voice of Aaron Jepson through the solid wood, growing louder as he pushed the door inward and stepped inside.

  “I curse the day I first laid eyes on you,” he was saying.

  There were two sets of footsteps, and I guessed that the second set must belong to Michael Adcott. There was no answer to Jepson’s ranting diatribe, but the echo of shuffling feet followed his hard, sharp strides into the hall. The door closed once more, and Jepson moved into the laboratory, shoving things about roughly. I held my breath, but he seemed to notice nothing amiss.

  “I suppose there’s nothing to do but to put you back in your cell and go in search of Watson,” he said at last. “There is more than one way to get a paper signed, and if Jeffries can’t straighten this out without the good doctor’s input, then input he shall have.”

  Only silence was his answer, and the two sets of footsteps moved closer to us once again, passing into the hall and by our door, moving into the gloomy interior of the old asylum. Holmes hesitated only for a moment, then followed. I trailed behind, moving a bit more slowly, dragging the tips of the fingers of my right hand along the wall beside us as we went. I didn’t want a chance misstep to alert Jepson to our presence. Indeed, I had no idea what Holmes planned to do, and I wanted to be as ready as possible for any circumstance.

  We followed the pair down into the bowels of that wretched structure, and at last I felt Holmes’s hand on my arm, and came to a stop. Just ahead, around a final corner, there was a stationary glow, as if a torch, or a lantern were being held. I could still hear Jepson’s muttering voice, and I heard, as well, the clatter of keys on a ring. Holmes was moving ahead again, very slowly now, and I followed, keeping well back, not wanting to cause my companion to stumble.

  Jepson’s words came into clearer focus. He was agitated to a state that his voice quavered. If I’d been seeing him in my office, I’d have prescribed a stiff brandy, and a few hours rest, but Jepson was as far from being prepared to rest as a man could be.

  “I’ll find him, don’t you worry,” he was saying. “I’ll make him sign those papers, show him the error of his ways. He saw you, plain as the nose on his face, walking about. Alive. No reason he shouldn’t sign, and by the Gods he will.”

  There was more. His lips never ceased their motion, the words flowing in an endless stream. There was the solid CLICK of a key turning in a lock, and the creaking of rusted hinge, followed by the shuffling of feet. I started to inch forward, not wanting to miss a word of what was being said, but I felt Holmes’s hand gripping my shoulder tightly, and I grew still.

  He leaned in close and whispered into my ear. “Something is afoot, Watson. Listen!”

  I did—and there were two voices. The second, far from coherent, began as a low moan, shivering up from some deep darkness I could not equate with human consciousness. I heard the scrape of shoes on the stone floor, but they weren’t measured steps. The sound was random and wild, quickly drowned out by the wailing voice. It rose from a moan to a banshee screech so rapidly that I was physically stunned by the blast of sound. There was a crash, and a loud cry, followed by a volley of crazed curses.

  “Now, Watson,” Holmes hissed. “We must hurry.”

  Without looking back, Holmes rounded the corner and stopped. I came up short behind him and stared over his shoulder.

  Aaron Jepson was shoving Michael Adcott toward the door of the cell frantically, cursing with each breath, fighting to avoid the other’s flailing arms. Adcott’s hands were clasped to his head, fingers twined in his thin, wispy hair, ripping, then gripping again, and ripping more, tufts drifting about the two in a slow-motion counterpoint to their struggle.

  “Get in that cell, damn you,” Jepson screeched.

  Adcott either didn’t hear the words, or ignored them. Backpedaling, he rammed Jepson into the stone wall, spun to the side and began slamming his own head into the stone with such force it made me sick to watch. Jepson, momentarily stunned, took a step toward Adcott, then seemed to think better of it. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. With trembling voice, he began to read, or, at least I believe he was reading. The words were unfamiliar to me, and his entire frame was shaking with such frustrated rage that he couldn’t hold the paper still enough to read.

  Adcott stilled, just for a moment. The man turned toward Jepson, who stood between Holmes, myself, and Adcott, providing a face-on view. To the day of my own death—may it be more lasting and complete than poor Michael’s—I will never shake the image of those eyes from my mind. They flared with inner light so intense that I could imagine worlds within, arms flailing and voices crying out for salvation. Those eyes were windows straight to hell, and in that second, they burned full force into the soul of Aaron Jepson.

  Jepson began to back away. He tried to continue the chant, but the words failed him, and his voice faltered, then fell silent. Adcott was moving with quick, purposeful strides that slipped from a walk to a full sprint in seconds, propelling his slight frame with alarming speed toward his tormentor. The madness of moments before had blossomed into an intense concentration of anger.

  “My God,” I whispered.

  Adcott hit Jepson at a full run. One of Michael’s hands gripped the other man by the throat and drove him backward into the stone with a sickening crunch. Jepson tried to speak, but no words or air made it past the iron grip at his throat. His legs buckled, and as Adcott continued to drive forward, squeezing ever harder, Aaron Jepson fell to his knees, eyes bulging.

  In a voice so clear and pure that it washed over the scene like the water of a mountain stream on a flame, Adcott spoke. He spoke three short words, and as he spoke them, Jepson struggled a final time, eyes widening further, if that was possible, and then went absolutely limp, the life crushed from his body.

  Adcott staggered back. The effort of concentration had drained him, and the otherworldly rage and strength with which he’d propelled himself vanished. He turned, noticing us for the first time, and raised a hand toward Holmes, as if asking for something. Seconds later, I saw Michael Adcott die for the second time in a single week, and I nearly fainted away on the spot.

  Holmes had me by the arm and headed toward the door before I had my wits fully about me, and we were out and into the waiting carriage without a word, closing and locking the doors of St. Elian’s behind us firmly. Holmes stared out into the night, and I collapsed into the seat and my own thoughts as the carriage hurried into the fog.

  We were seated in Holmes’s study, sipping brandy and watching the fire that very night. Holmes was staring into the flames, not offering any explanations, and at last I’d had all I could stand of it.

  “Holmes,” I said, “back in that laboratory, you said there was something we were missing. I’m familiar with Caresco’s work, and
the abominations he is purported to have created. I have heard that he managed to reverse aging in some subjects, though at the cost of the mind—this is beyond me. I never heard that he had cheated death, and in any case, Adcott showed none of the madness reported of the earlier experiments. A great number of very learned men have pored over the bits and pieces that remain of his notes—they found the research to be an abomination, and the process beyond repair. Was Jepson a mad genius?”

  “He was not,” Holmes replied, turning to me at last, steepling his fingers and taking a long breath. “Aaron Jepson was a Jew.”

  I stared at my friend, wondering if something in the night’s business had addled his brains. He returned my gaze with his usual frank, half-amused expression firmly in place. I waited, and, finally, cracked.

  “What in the world,” I asked slowly, “can that possibly have to do with this mess?”

  For the first time since we’d left that accursed asylum, Holmes smiled.

  “How much do you know of Jewish history?” he asked. I shrugged, and he continued. “There are legends,” he said. “Legends that trail back to the Holy Land itself, and that are known to only a select few. When you first spoke to me, I was nearly certain that Adcott must have a twin that no one had been aware of, or a cousin who bore a striking resemblance to the dead man that they were trying to pass off as Adcott to win the funds form the Tontine. There were obvious answers, but very quickly, the obvious answers caved in, one by one.

  “I then began to explore the less obvious, and there was something that bothered me from the start. Jepson’s name. I knew it was familiar to me, but Aaron is hardly an uncommon name, nor is Jepson, so I set out to see if I could find what it was that itched at my mind.

  “My search led me to the local temple, and the Rabbi, an old friend, was very helpful. He remembered the name of Aaron Jepson immediately, but the Jepson he remembered had been dead for many years. Jepson was a Rabbi, or had been. He migrated to London about fifty years ago and made a home here, but even among his fellows he was shunned. Rabbi Jepson had spent years in the Arabian Desert, studying and fasting. He came away from that study—changed. He had scrolls and teachings that were unfamiliar to the others already settled here, scrolls dealing with legendary creatures and the Kabbalah. Scrolls dealing with the golem. It is reported that he had a scrap of cloth that contained verses from Alhazred himself, inscribed in blood. Bits of a larger work.”

  “The Necronomicon?” I asked dubiously. “That work has long been passed off as legend. And what in the world is a Golem, Holmes, and what has it to do with Michael Adcott?”

  “The Golem was an instrument of revenge,” Holmes continued. “It was a creature formed of clay and brought to life by the will, faith and rage of a Rabbi. It would serve the purpose of that rage, and only the Rabbi himself could control it.”

  “And Adcott?” I asked, not certain I wanted the answer. “He was no man of clay.”

  “No,” Holmes agreed. “He was a man brought to a sort of hellish, painful un-life by the science of Caresco Surhomme and the diabolical research of Aaron Jepson. It was the incantations, and the clay, Watson, clay from another place—another time. Clay inherited from Jepson’s father, Aaron Jepson Senior—Rabbi Jepson. The substance in that sixth vial was the very clay of which I speak. When I found a bit of it on your doorstep, I was intrigued. When I saw the vial, I was certain.

  “Through the power invested in the clay, Jepson was able to exercise enough control of Adcott’s re-animated form to lead it about in public. You’ll recall that Adcott never spoke, not at your first meeting, nor at any time thereafter.”

  “But he did,” I said at last. “He spoke, right at the end. What do you suppose he said, and what enabled him to do what he did?”

  “He spoke in Hebrew,” Holmes answered at once. “The words were very clear, and I suspect, appropriate. I believe that Adcott’s soul managed to make use of the same power that the elder Jepson would have used to animate clay. He used his will, and his faith, and he spoke the only words that could bring him peace.”

  “He said ‘It is done.’”

  I stared at Holmes for a long time, watching for doubt, or belief, anything in those wise eyes that would prove a clue to the mind beyond, but he had turned his gaze to the fire once again, and grown silent.

  “I wonder,” I said, rising and retrieving my coat, suddenly very tired and ready for my own home, and my bed, “who got the money.”

  Holmes didn’t look up as I departed, but I sensed the smile in his answer.

  “To the living go the spoils, Watson. Always to the living.”

  Shaking my head, I opened the door and made my way into the late evening fog.