Rifts of the rising sun's deep orange light struggled past thick gathering clouds and parting fog to illuminate Bedlam Hospital*, Southwark London.
Sherlock Holmes strode through the institutions thick black iron gate. Watson hurried behind after tossing their cab driver a sovereign for his bribed haste and for abiding the pair's stench.
Watson ran through Bedlam's main entrance to hear Holmes sternly ordering to speak to Keeper Arion Steppenwulf*. He caught up with the detective striding resolutely toward the hospital's subterranean wing reserved for the criminally insane.
"You think it must be him again?" Watson huffed. He was still worn down from the night's excursions with battling the Hounds of the Baskervilles. Holmes hardly looked the worse for wear, though his face had strained into becoming far more solemn than usual.
Almost a year earlier the detective had taken on a case for their most unexpected client yet. Sherlock's former antagonist, Irene Adler*, had shown herself into 221 Baker Street.
Miss Adler hired the detective to help a singer friend of hers (curiously named after a hat) who had fallen into the snare of a malicious and dangerous rogue. The fiend had eluded notice from the authorities due to the way in which he enacted his atrocities. Svengali the hypnotist* could mesmerize minds with seemingly supernatural skill.
Svengali's victims were so thoroughly subjugated to his will they were pro-scripted from any actions to free themselves, let alone ask for help from anyone. It was only due to Irene Adler's keen senses she was able to discern the methods and culprit behind her mesmerized friend.
The hospital halls echoed the pandemonium from its inhabitants. As Holmes and Watson reached the basement level, the cacophony drowned out almost completely.
Keeper Steppenwulf appeared and strode beside Sherlock.
"What an honor," the buck-toothed, watery-eyed Keeper said. "This is the first time the famed Detective Sherlock Holmes has deigned set foot inside my hospital walls."
"This is the first time," Sherlock said, without looking at the Keeper. "I've had to haul back a returning guest. We arrived here in all due haste. Another hansom will be arriving shortly containing a criminal you have allowed to escape."
Steppenwulf stopped walking. "Escaped? I don't know anything about an escaped-"
Sherlock held up a finger to hush the man. "I know you don't. Your incompetence precedes you, dear Keeper. Come along now; this way."
Watson knew his companion had been responsible for capturing many dangerous criminals, but it was still a shock for him to notice the number of placards nailed to doors engraved with names he himself had written about helping to capture and bring to justice.
Without looking back at Watson and the keeper, he stopped in front of Stapleton's cell.
"Open it," Holmes said, sounding infinitely impatient.
Steppenwulf slid open the viewing slat and peered in. "He's still in there."
"Open it," Holmes hissed.
A rattling of keys, clang of the heavy door, and Holmes was charging into one of the most impenetrable cells in the Empire.
"Looks like him," Sherlock said, grabbing the chained inhabitant of the cell by his face. "Watson, what do you make of this?"
The coarse way Sherlock squeezed the man's face and man-handled the head around to show Watson the ears reminded the Doctor of potential meat being examined at a cattle auction.
The detective held his magnifying glass above the cell inhabitant's jawline for Watson to see.
"St. Paul's severed head," Watson cursed. "There are inseams around his face; barely detectable even under the lens."
Sherlock tossed the imposter down into a heap before rushing out of the cell and round its bend.
Watson locked eyes with the shocked Keeper. The man appeared too shocked to move and took several moments before following suit behind Watson, who in turn was rushing after the detective.
"What about him?" Steppenwulf said, indicating the poor stranger with Jack Stapleton's face sewn into his head.
"Stash him somewhere safe," Sherlock said back. "And try not to also lose this fake one."
A minute later they were stepping into Svengali's cell.
The inhabitant was mostly bald, short, squat and pear-shaped, with Svengali's characteristic spindly fingers.
"I can hardly believe it," Watson said putting the magnifying glass to the man's face. "This face also proves not to belong to the body it's attached to. Unless…" Watson snapped his fingers. "We know Stapleton to have escaped, and the soul left in his cell to be a doppleganger, but these scars could be a false clue." He looked expectantly into Sherlock's eyes. "The devil responsible for Stapleton's decoy would only need to add these scars to Svengali's head to make us believe the true one was spirited away. This may yet be the real man himself!"
Watson's hope of making a profound deduction was instantly dashed as Sherlock was already shaking his head. "Afraid not, old man. No time to explain, but further examination of this imposter will only prove he is not the real hypnotist." His eyes went wide. "Jove's salacity! Who else here may have been doppleganged?"
A spark of terror lit a flame beneath Watson. He sprang to his feet. "I know precisely the last man I would ever want escaping here. Arion, give me those keys."
The sweat pooling on his forehead and drenching his sleeve as he wiped was now all from fear, rather than the earlier excursions.
Watson skidded before the dreaded door then waited for the two orderlies to catch up with him before unlocking and entering the cell. The occupant was too dangerous to risk confronting alone.
Inside was a man thrice as chained as any other patient in Bedlam's ward for the criminally insane.
He had always been a slight man, though imprisonment had sucked what little meat from his bones he still had before incarceration. His skin condition was worse than Doctor Watson would have expected it could ever get.
The prisoner's entire skin was a raw red hue. His body ran hotter than most to the point steam poured from his mouth as if his belly contained live coals.
He looked up at Watson with his black, lusterless eyes. They moved slowly as if heavy in his own skull, no doubt a side effect of the inhumanly large quantities of laudanum that was his daily prescription.
"Ah, the writer," said the pitiable chained man with that distinct voice which sounded labored to be speaking past a throat scraped raw by the swallowing of pyroclastic rocks.
Watson struggled to find his own voice. "Jack."
Of course, the killer's real name wasn't 'Jack,' just the nom de plume which he would become world-renowned as*.
"I've been following your accounts of the detective's adventures as much as I am able, doctor," Jack said. Each word he spoke made Watson involuntarily want to clear his own throat, due to how painful the hoarse voice sounded. "But I failed to notice even the faintest notion of Sherlock Holmes's adventure in apprehending me."
Watson took note of how dry his throat was feeling before answering. "Some tales are better left off even the pages of the most grotesque of Penny Dreadfuls."
He shut the door and watched as the orderlies locked and bolted the additional securities.
Sherlock met him half-way down the hall. "Well?" He asked, looking downright dour.
"No doubt in my mind that's the only and original Ripper," Watson said.
Sherlock's face visibly lightened a tone at that. "The first good news of the evening; or, I suppose, the dawn. Now," he rubbed his hands in anticipation for future events, "Out of the worst of the brood here, we have evidence of two emancipated criminals. It sounds as if one is currently being brought back into his rightful abode. So it is up to us to find the other."
Watson followed out of the criminal-ward toward the light. "There is one worst-case-scenario criminal that could be pulling the strings of these events, whom we would not find within any of these cells."
Sherlock chuckled. "I think I can deduce the individual you're afraid of."
"Are you sure, Sherlock," Watson whispered. "Are you dead positive you killed him?"
Sherlock shot one furtive glance of reassurance to Watson. "You need not scare yourself by thinking these events are the machinations of Professor Moriarty. That chapter has already been written and concluded."
Watson smiled, feeling put at ease at his renewed certainty of Moriarty's death. Before remembering his certainty of the once-late Sherlock Holmes's assumed demise."
—-
On their way out of Bedlam, the duo was stopped by an orderly wearing a bowler hat.
"Bugger me," said the orderly in good cheer. "What astounding luck! The preeminent detective Sherlock Holmes!"
The boisterous man jutted out a hand which Holmes left hanging in the air until Watson grabbed it for him.
"It's not in his way to shake hands with admirers," Watson apologized.
The orderly's grin never faltered. "No, no, I wouldn't expect him to deign such an act for one like me. Should've known better, I should have. Say," the man startled Watson by vigorously rolling up his left sleeve. "Could I bother the esteemed detective for his signature upon my skin?"
Watson scoffed.
Holmes looked at the man for the first time since his approach.
"Upon your left arm?" Sherlock asked.
"Rightly so," the orderly said, digging a pen from his right pocket and offering it to the detective.
"I take it you mean to take your arm, and my signature thereupon, to make it permanent in ink?"
The orderly's grin turned sheepish. "Caught me, Mr. Holmes. Just as to be expected though. Just to be expected from your eminence."
"On your non-dominant arm?" Sherlock's eye looked pointed enough to pierce the man.
"Well…" The orderly took a step backward. "You see, as much as I am your biggest admirer, Mr. Holmes, I have recently had God's blessing on my poor life, enough to meet a man whom I equally admire, though must admit may be your better as a detective."
Even in the face of his murderous enemies, Watson had rarely seen such a flare of anger as then flashed through Sherlock's visage.
The detective grabbed the orderly by his right arm, which the man acquiesced.
Sherlock flung open the man's sleeve, to reveal the ventricose black and red scribbles of a recently applied tattoo.
"Chevalier Dupin*," it read.
The orderly again looked sheepish.
Sherlock pressed his face to stoicism, forcing himself not to scowl.
"Sorry, your eminence," said the orderly. "What with Dupin being a what amounts to a knight, I assume him to be… certainly not less than your equal as a consulting detective."
"No need to apologize, my woefully benighted man," Sherlock said. "Firstly, that man is not a consulting detective, only a mere amateur. Second, my own knighthood is merely postponed at the moment, as the Queen has her own personal matters to contend with before the antiquated little ceremony can commence."
"Or," Watson added, "you could say our Queen hasn't the, er, acquired taste for Mr. Holmes."
The orderly's mouth fell agape. "You've met Queen Victoria?" He addressed Holmes. "And you made a bad impression?"
"Auguste Dupin," Sherlock said. "How is it you came across him? He crossed your path recently, as evidenced by your still healing tattoo."
"Well, he's been in and out of Bedlam the last couple of weeks. He's a student of the mind, after all. And he's a hobbyist of an alienist to boot. Though," the orderly lowered his voice," for my salt's worth, he makes a better alienist than any we've got rutting about bothering to get paid for it there. It sounds spooky, but he seems able to read your mind. When I met him he told me all about what I was thinking, as well as things, deeply private things, about myself I have never told a soul about."
Sherlock's back was turned to the two other men. "No," he said to himself. "This can be no coincidence. He must be tied to these escapes and the ensuing cover-ups…"
"Sorry," Watson said. "Who is this Frenchman? A consulting detective and an alienist?"
"He is neither of those things," Sherlock turned to face them again. "Orderly, Dupin's address. Where is he?"
*Bedlam Hospital: A Mental Asylum in Southwark London. In this universe full of improbably smart geniuses, mystically powerful scientists, and super-sleuths, such an institution would hold much more prominence than the real-life model, by design.
*Arion Steppenwolf: A more-or-less OC.
*Irene Adler: From A Scandal In Bohemia, a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
*Svengali: Main antagonist from the novel Trilby by George du Maurier.
*Jack the Ripper: Since no one knows the true identity of this famous killer, any depiction of him is purely fictitious. He's not from any Sherlock Holmes story, obviously, since such an adventure would be far too gruesome for that medium.
*Chevalier Auguste Dupin: First appeared in the short story Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe. He's Often cited as the first protagonist of any "detective fiction," and thus Sherlock Holmes' predecessor in the genre.