-
Inspector Patterson reclined like a poorly-stuffed pillow onto the shingle of Streat and wondered just how close to death he truly was.
Sand-grains dug into the thinness of his cheek, and his eyes slitted half-closed of their own volition against the fine grains that blew up at the faintest puff. It wasn't normal to feel this detached from his surroundings…and being fired at with companions who were in great danger was not the sort of thing to be detached from.
He could no longer tell where he'd been shot. The pain had dulled at the epicenter but spread outward, sharing its agony with every bone, nerve, muscle, and cell. Half his body felt as though it were slowly splitting down the middle.
Fever rose within him, and came and went…chills passed with the sensation of lying inside a bake-oven. Bradstreet continued to dose him with contents out of various flasks…he could feel lassitude crawling in. It was dangerous.
Sheer exhaustion could kill a man quite easily.
They lowered him to the sands when it was clear his strength was at an ebb. Ebb. He was waning like the tide. He knew this was a poor sign of his future. Death came slowly, one inch at a time until it seemed such a good idea to just give in and close one's eyes against the mortal pains.
When the shooting started up, a part of his brain was sensible enough to be grateful for being out of the worst risk. The rest regretted that they were putting their own lives on the line to protect him. He, who was the weakest one of the group and the most likely to die.
A bullet kicked dust and powdered salt not far from his face. He closed his eyes and held his breath for it to settle. A sense of surrealism had become a part of him. The rocky earth had lost its hard texture and was starting to feel soft…yielding…
…comfortable.
Comforting as the last bed on earth…
Something shifted beneath him, like the beginning of a delusion. He knew that sensation well. Unsure if he should miss it (real or imagined) the Inspector forced his heavy eyes to open, inch by inch.
Sand shifted, hissed as it sank downward into a trench shaped like a perfect square. A door, he realised even as the shooting from across the stones reached a frentic pitch. Behind him Hopkins was cursing with new words, and Loseth had melted to an unintelligible shuffle of Orkneyjar while Bradstreet scolded like a bearded fishwife. Patterson ignored them easily. He was frozen with cold, pain, weariness, and yes, surprise.
A door in the sands…someone found the tunnels from the old settlement…
-
Watson rounded the turn first and paused, lantern high to show the tunnel gone. It went up and layered with concrete-set steps like a fruit-cellar. At the top rested an oak door, black with age and water. It was probably hard as the iron bands holding the hinges in. Sand tried to collect, but someone was scrupulously sweeping it away; there was even a broom propped in a corner for the duty. A web was forming on its tip.
Lestrade glared at something small as it scurried on many legs to dark places, and slapped another flag of web off his shoulder. "I haven't been this filthy since I was in the Cornish stanneries," he said under his breath.
Watson paused to look at him. "What were you doing in the stanneries?" It was the sort of voice one might use in saying, "Why were you vacationing on the Isle of Dogs?"
"Tin mines. Someone was helping themselves to a portion of the Prince of Wales' rightful tax."
"Hmph. It's not a tin mine unless there's a Cornishman in the bottom of it." Gregson held back on a resounding sneeze as the dust in the air was replaced with minute grains of sand. He could make out thin strips of light—brilliant as mercury after their long walk—and took a step backwards with the rest just in time.
The wind gusted through those narrow windows of light around the heavy oaken doors, kicking up more powdery sand like ground glass against their eyelids. They covered their lower faces with their sleeves and put their backs to the damp walls until the dust-storm passed.
"That's not right," Gregson said when they could speak again. "There has to be something to release the air pressure or the wind wouldn't be coming in like that."
"I think they have this part of the isle riddled with passages." Watson put the lantern down for a moment to flex his stiff fingers. He looked almost himself with the last of the painted wax off his face. "It couldn't be as such on the other side with the bogs…that wouldn't be practical at all…not to mention it would be dangerous."
Now that they'd stopped, Lestrade was starting to feel the past two days catching up to him. He tucked his hands inside his sleeves and wished for a cup of something hot. Hot enough to scald the stomach on its way down.
They didn't smell sweet, he noted. Blood, sweat, and the reek of the rough men who'd put their hands on them was overlain with the cold, damp must of the tunnel.
When he thought about it, Sir Niles' entire manor had something of that musty, mushroom-smell in it.
What a dreadful place to live in. Ancestral titles be damned, I shall take the first street off the Neckinger as healthier.
"Watson, I can't help but notice you aren't just rushing outside into the open air." Gregson cleared his throat.
"I'm not certain what would be out there," was the doctor's quietly disturbing response. "I was brought in at night, but I could discern a low sweep of the coast, a few rough boulders and a path that winds along the pattern of the island rock. It leads to the Hall in a very indirect fashion…but if we're to just come outside, we could be exposed to something worse."
"Strange to put a secret hatch this close to the sea," Lestrade pointed out, and then abruptly frowned, dark and brooding.
"Easy there, Lestrade. That glare you're putting out is enough to snuff my torch."
Lestrade spared only one second for a pointed look at Gregson. "This manor of Sir Niles…how long has it been here?"
"I could not say…why?" Watson wondered.
"Well…" Lestrade flushed slightly. "What if the manor was here…originally? What else would explain a hatch this close to the water? Water-lines change. The coast sinks, and the water moves in. And if that's the case, a man as…well…mentally ill as Sir Niles would be keeping track of all the underground passages…what if one of them led to a ship or a boat in case of emergencies? Charter did say his master was prepared...Moriarty seems to know a lot about what Sir Niles knew…what if he wasn't far from this place?"
Watson blinked as Gregson grinned.
"It's so gratifying to see my own smarts finally rubbing off on you, Lestrade." He smirked in a way that made Watson think he would have challenged the man to a duel years ago. "Does this mean you'll finally be my apprentice?"
Lestrade didn't kill Gregson on the spot—thus earning at that moment Watson's eternal respect—but he glared at him with such ferocity it was a wonder the other Yarder didn't expire. "I declare to you, I will eat a raw eel before that happens!" He vowed.1
"You'll not while I am here to stop you." Watson said firmly. "I've seen what happens to people who do such a thing on a dare."
"Lestrade's stubborn enough that it wouldn't affect him." Gregson sniffed. He pushed aside and began to make his way up the steps.
"Gregson! Watch what you're—"
Gregson's hand had been about to touch the heavy metal bar on the door when a piece of the thick wood burst into splinters. Something small and deadly passed the air over their heads and smashed into the cut stone behind.
"I swear I'll kill you myself," Lestrade cursed. "Get your barmy head down, Gregson! There's another tea party out there!"
"If that's your idea of a tea party, this tunnel must connect to Boston!" Gregson would never let Lestrade get the last word.
"What the blazes are you doing, you sot?"
"Huh…" Gregson had leaned down on his belly and, faster than seemed possible for such a big man, reached up from the steps and flipped the iron bar off its support.
And looked straight into the equally surprised face of Inspector Patterson.
-
Gregson was never a slow thinker. Looking at Patterson (who looked like he was already dead), lying on the sands not three yards from his own face, while Bradstreet, Hopkins and—Loseth??—fumbled and tried to avoid the bullets peppering the air…
Well, Gregson didn't need to be a deep philosopher to accurately assess the situation.
"One more moment, and I'll pull you back in here!" Lestrade was shouting over the bullets' ring.
"Hold on…" Gregson hastily let the hatch drop and blinked sand-smoke out of his eyes. "I think we're in a crossroads," he gasped. "The others are out there, and they're huddled up like chickens behind the rocks that are ringing this door! They can't get a clear shot from the other side!"
Watson's face cleared as he understood what Gregson was saying. "Do they have weapons?"
"For all the good it's doing them." Gregson complained. "They'd have a chance on the angles if they were as far back as we are, but they'd be too exposed for that sort of maneouvre."
"Then we are saved, Gentlemen…"
-
Patterson watched the hatch lift up again. This time the heavy wood lifted up a good sight higher than six inches. Dr. Watson's grim face looked back at him. Wisps of pale blue paint mottled his face in the grey sea-light. He looked like some sort of barrow-wight rising to wreck vengeance on foolish invaders.
"Throw us a gun!" He commanded.
There was no disagreeing with that voice. Patterson rolled over while the bullet-spray grew thicker, and tugged at Hopkins' trouser-cuff. The young man glanced down, his mouth parting to say something…and then he took in what was happening just behind him. His mouth finished dropping.
"Gun!" Watson barked.
Hopkins flipped the catch and threw without a second's hesitation.
Smart man.
The small hand-gun flew end over end into the air and went down with a splash of sand. Watson grabbed, as quick as a man who must seize a poisonous serpent before he himself is bitten. A stray bullet slapped a coral past his arm and sprayed the air with black grit. Watson already had the gun in his hand.
"There's one fifteen degrees to the left of the centre," Lestrade snapped. "But there's two twenty degrees to the right."
"Hopkins!" Gregson signaled frantically. "Tell them to toss their guns here!"
Watson didn't wait for that to happen. He aimed and fired.
-
"Good Lord." Bradstreet hunched into the smallest possible space over Patterson. "Loseth, do get down. You're too big to be an inconvenient target."
Loseth obeyed without a peep. He'd thrown his iron to Gregson, who'd promptly passed it on to Lestrade. Bradstreet was grateful; Lestrade was the better shot. Gregson used a different form of force when he was on a case.
Watson only fired thrice.
It was enough.
-
Watson led the way out in the stillness of the surf. About them there was a conspicuous absence of any sort of noise.
The three men employed to kill Bradstreet, Hopkins, Patterson and Loseth were dead instead. Lestrade found himself staring at one of the hooligans, whose brains leaked into the dark grey sands less than a yard from the lacework of salt foam.
They would have killed them if given the chance. That was the whole point, wasn't it?
And yet he was trying to keep his feelings to himself. He wasn't trained for this sort of battle. Nor was Gregson, to go by the way the big man was paler than usual and his chill blue eyes lingered slowly over the dark forms.
Most good Britishmen never used a gun. Especially for murder. It was an expensive thing...bulky...cumbersome...hard to conceal and prone to its own troubles. Even with his long history in the CID, Lestrade couldn't think of more than twenty cases that involved this sort of death. A fight of this nature touched upon a cold, distant form of mayhem that somehow was more terrible than the personal depravity of knives or clubs, garrote-wires or even poison.
Watson had been prepared and capable of the worst if he had been able to strike like a single-man Army into this pack of poor fools.
"Lestrade," Gregson's thick, white hand descended on his shoulder. "Sit you down and take a breath. You're fagged out."
Lestrade complied only because he promised to take it up with his rival later.
Later. Need to make certain there is a later.
About him, Watson was bending over Patterson and asking questions in a low, crisp voice that said he at least knew what he was doing. He chose Loseth as his assistant as he tore cloth into strips.
Gregson was talking to Bradstreet and Hopkins.
"...He said it!" Gregson was insisting to an incredulous audience. "I didn't! I wouldn't make such a thing up, gentlemen! For whatever reason, John Clay and Jethro Quimper believe Colonel Moriarty had Sir Niles shot!"
Good luck explaining that, Lestrade thought wearily. His head ached. When he stared at the sands beyond his hand, the subtle pattern shifted and blurred before his eyes and became something...something else.
It's cold, he thought.
-
"You did well," Watson nodded his approval. "But we need to double the amount of colloidal silver."
"How am I?" Patterson rasped. He was clearly prepared for the worst.
Watson looked at him kindly, from beneath ghostly blue marks of woad and wax. "You shall live, Inspector. You are merely very tired. I don't recommend a night about after being shot."
"What about Lestrade?" Hopkins whispered. "He looks like death on rarebit."
"He's worn out, Hopkins." Gregson said gruffly. "Had a lot less sleep than I did, and a bit more banging about."
"We can't rest just yet," Patterson whispered. "Not safe out here."
"I'll get him up." Bradstreet promised. He took firm, long-legged strides around Loseth and knelt by the dosing Yarder.
"Geoffrey, you look tired out, but we need to all be on our feet. We've got to get going to some place safe."
"It's cold..." Geoffrey mumbled.
"Yes, it'll be even colder, Geoffrey...come on, now..."
Lestrade shook him off halfway through the assistance. "We've got to get out of here!" He yelped. "Or close the hatch! Where's a rock?" He looked wildly back and forth. "Somebody find a bloody rock!"
"What?!" Gregson exclaimed.
"The sand!" Lestrade gasped in shock. "It wasn't being blown in, Gregson, it was being sucked in!"
"Bloody hell!" Gregson turned as white as the cliffs of Dover. "Someone's behindin the tunnel us!"