Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Part 10

"Yes, derived from the German oak and fir, a chemical most commonly used in the process of tannery. I'd also wager that the viscera we discovered alongside the body had similar traces of the substance. And, here, dear doctor, we are."

Not bothering to try and fathom the inner-workings of my colleague's exceptional mind, I return my attention to the tannery. Much like the offices down Ossory Road, it is a broken-down and ramshackle building.

"And what, old boy, do you expect to find in there?"

Holmes' smile loses its warmth. "Monsters, my dear Watson."

We enter through a side door, noting that its lock has been forced and eventually broken. Within, the tannery is gloomy and we proceed slowly and with care down a narrow channel, flanked either side by large copper vats that have long since fallen to disuse. Overhead I make out the ragged silhouettes of rawhide and other partially cured flesh hanging from stout metal hooks suspended from thick beams set into the ceiling. The effect is both grisly and disconcerting. Ahead is a set of black iron steps leading to an upper level, where I a.s.sume the offices of this establishment are located.

Just as I am wondering what has happened to our monstrous companion, we hear voices coming from the upper level.

Holmes turns to me with a finger on his lips and, pistols drawn, we advance quietly up the steps.

Upon reaching the summit, my suspicions about the upper level are confirmed as we are presented with an office area. There is a desk and a similar array of papers and scientific paraphernalia as we saw in Victor Frankenstein's study. I realise then that this is no office, but in fact a crude laboratory Three men are present: one a burly-looking thug, the other two well attired and evidently gentlemen, if in name and not manner. The first is wiry, his suit jacket b.u.t.toned and pressed, hair slicked back. The second is rangier still, but without jacket, shirtsleeves rolled up over his elbows, top b.u.t.ton loose. Dark rings around his eyes suggest fatigue; the sweat upon his brow, stress. He is talking animatedly to the other gentleman-I take this to be the lawyer, J.G. Utterson-who listens as the other man frantically leafs through the myriad papers on the desk.

I am about to remark my findings to Holmes, but in the short time it has taken me to compile this observational a.n.a.lysis, my colleague has mounted the upper level and is proceeding to advance boldly on the three men.

Cursing Holmes', at times, suicidal craving for drama, I follow.

The thuggish brute sees my colleague first and grunts to the others. There's a nervous tic affecting the man's right eye and what appears to be delirium tremens shaking his thick fingers. Still, he appears to have no weapon or I believe he would have already drawn it.

Both gentlemen look up but it is the lawyer who speaks first. "This is private property," he says, reaching for his inside pocket until I glare and slowly shake my head. "What are you doing here?"

Holmes answers, "I should like to put the same question to you, my good man."

The lawyer's eyes narrow. "Who are you?"

The other, as yet unknown gentleman now joins in, "Why, John," he says, referring to his friend, "don't you recognise them?" Leaving the papers to the chaos he has made of them, he steps around the desk and stands alongside John Utterson. The brute is still in the background, but looms large over the other two. "This is the inestimable Sherlock Holmes and his redoubtable servant, Dr John Watson."

Utterson stiffens at the revelation, just as my colleague deigns the unknown man with a short bow.

"And you are Dr Henry Jekyll, are you not?" says Holmes, and my eyes widen at the name.

The man before us is a wraith, a ma.s.s murderer several years dead, or so I had believed. I am unable to recall the full details but remember a strange case involving Henry Jekyll and another man, Edward Hyde. What he is doing here is, as yet, a mystery.

"How long have you been hiding in the shadows, good Doctor?" Holmes asks. "Was Bartholomew Sh.e.l.ley your apprentice? Was he to walk in the light where you could not for fear of being recognised? Did he baulk at what you were doing here and refuse to a.s.sist you further? Is that why you had one of your thugs separate his head from his shoulders?"

Jekyll merely smiles, running a hand through the feverish sweat in his hair.

"How did you find me?" he asks, a subtle change in his tone and diction that I thought I imagined at first.

Holmes returns the smile. "It was elementary."

Utterson then turns to Jekyll. "Henry, I cannot be implicated in this..."

'Nor I," Jekyll replies, "the formula isn't perfected yet." And at this point I note the many vials and philtres set out on a shorter bench behind the two men. I know not what they are concocting but I recognise an experiment when I see it.

Without further conversation, Jekyll steps to one side.

"Zeus. Kill them both."

The brute lurches into motion, swift as a charging ape, arms swinging low by his sides to cement the image. Holmes and I fire as one, but the brute's sudden speed puts off our aim and he grunts in pain as our shots strike him in the arm and torso respectively.

It is barely enough to slow him.

We run.

Taking two stairs at a time, I feel sure we are outpacing the brute until it leaps down in front of us to block our exit.

"Please tell me you discussed this with Lestrade before we came here," I say, backing off in lockstep with my colleague.

"Afraid not, Watson," replies Holmes, as our simian aggressor advances on us.

"Can't let you live, Holmes," Jekyll calls from above us, "nor you, Dr Watson. I am truly sorry, but even with Victor Frankenstein's research my work is incomplete, and I fear your untimely intervention would delay it indefinitely."

"Quite understandable, Dr Jekyll, but I am afraid we shall have to disappoint," Holmes replies.

We are almost with our backs to the steps again, and out of room to manoeuvre.

"Oh?" asks Jekyll.

He sounds amused and I don't appreciate the humour of the situation until I notice the shadow looming behind Zeus. The thug sniffs the air, realising his error a fraction too late, as Victor Frankenstein's monstrous creation enfolds him in its arms and starts to squeeze.

I hear a shout from above us, but can't discern if it's Jekyll or Utterson. Most of my attention is focused on getting Holmes and myself out of harm's way as the monster and the brute wrestle. We duck off to the side, hurrying around them until we're at a safe distance, and watch the brawl from behind one of the tanning vats.

Honestly, I am expecting Frankenstein's monster to tear the other man apart, but I have not considered the sheer depths of turpitude to which Dr Jekyll has sunk in his nefarious endeavours.

Face reddening by the second, Zeus breaks the hold of the creature, and is seemingly... grown. His entire body, his musculature, his hands but not his head, have enlarged. Veins stand out on his neck, rope-like and thick. His small eyes bulge. Like a silverback gorilla, he strikes out at the monster, a palpable blow that sends it to its knees.

Shaking, growing further, this new abomination looms over the monster and prepares to hit it again. Interlacing both hands, it will smash the creature while its head is down.

"If he kills it..." I mutter.

"Then our exit is behind us, John," Holmes answers, "and G.o.dspeed that we reach it in time." He glances up from the fight between the two t.i.tans. "Come on," he says, deciding, "we cannot allow Jekyll or Utterson to escape."

Only half paying attention, I watch as the monster seizes the brute's wrists before his fists can fall.

"Go!" it snarls at us. "For my father."

"For the law of everything that is right and decent," says Holmes, but nods to the creature nonetheless.

We run, back up the steps this time, pa.s.sing the two ma.s.sive brawlers.

By the time we reach the upper level again, Utterson has fled but Jekyll remains. He is hunched over the small bench, a steel syringe in his right hand that he drops to the floor where it clatters.

"Henry Jekyll," I shout, my pistol held out before me, "turn and raise your hands."

As he does, I see the dark rings around the doctor's eyes have deepened and there is a transformation occurring within them. And not only his eyes-his entire body is reshaping.

"I doubt he's coming quietly, old boy," says Holmes, and I cannot argue.

We exchange the briefest look before discharging our weapons in unison.

Unlike the monsters grappling below us, Jekyll is shaken by the impact of both bullets. He staggers back, two crimson stains blossoming from around the holes in his shirt, before merging and overlapping in the middle.

He falls off the edge of the upper level and into one of the tanning vats below.

Holmes and I rush after him, stopping short at the edge of the wooden platform and looking down as we try to discover the doctor's fate.

At first there is nothing, then the viscous contents of the vat start to bubble and froth.

"How many more bullets do you have, Watson?" Holmes asks, rising from a crouching position and backing away from the edge. He doesn't have to tell me to do the same.

I check. "Just one. You?"

"The very same."

We get as far as halfway back to the steps when something large and formidable springs from the vat where we saw Henry Jekyll fall to his certain death not a moment ago. It is ma.s.sive and hulking, the equal of the brute but with a feral intelligence in its eye that the other abomination does not possess. Clothes torn, dripping with acidic tannin, it looks raw and b.e.s.t.i.a.l despite the cognition in its eyes.

"Jekyll," I gasp.

The thing wearing the doctor's shredded attire slowly shakes its head and corrects me in a deep voice, "Hyde."

In my gut, I feel that the thing Jekyll has turned into is about to pounce, and there is nothing Holmes or I can do to prevent it.

Or so I believe.

Holmes tilts his aim wide and fires off his last shot. It clips the lamp Jekyll had been using to see in the dingy confines of the tannery, and Hyde laughs at my colleague's apparent inept.i.tude until the spark from the shot ignites the spilled oil and sets him aflame.

With a roar, Hyde goes up in conflagration. Drenched in tannin, the flames burn eagerly. He leaps again, straight up, and catches hold of one of the rafters in the ceiling. Brachiating from beam to beam, he seeks to swing his way free and douse the fire ravaging his flesh.

"After him, Watson!" Holmes cries, and I marvel at the sheer courage of the man as he throws himself across the wooden platform and down the iron steps.

Blindly pursuing my colleague, I come to an abrupt and sudden halt, almost barrelling into Holmes' back.

The brute is larger still and has the monster in a vice-like grip around the neck, but just as he is about to dispatch it, he changes again. Mutation is rapid this time and, far from apotheosis, signals the brute's demise. Like a bellows filled with too much air, the brute expands, skin stretching to accommodate.

"Behind me...." " rasps the monster, shielding us, and through the gaps in its ma.s.sive frame I witness an explosion of flesh, blood and matter as the brute combusts before our very eyes. Nothing is left following this violent reaction, nothing but a pool of sticky red viscera.

There is little time to appreciate the connection. I had misinterpreted Hyde's intentions-he wasn't trying to escape, he was tying up his loose ends, including the tannery and us.

Fire is spreading quickly across the roof, virulent like a plague, colonising every foot and yard, dissolving it in a black and orange sea.

Smoke thickens the air, so much that I raise my handkerchief to my mouth.

"Holmes," I shout above the din of burning timber and the crackle of flames, "we have to get out of here."

"Agreed," Holmes replies, looking up.

I follow his gaze but can find no sign of Hyde.

"You too," Holmes says to the creature, which nods once.

The monster leads us. Parts of the wooden roof are collapsing around us now, and our way back is far from straightforward. A huge burning beam crashes down in our path and we are almost immolated. Our grotesque companion shoves it aside, despite the obvious pain it causes, and I find myself wondering if I have misjudged this poor creature.

"Nearly there," I hear Holmes say, though I can scarcely see him through the grey pall of smoke that is billowing around us.

Mere paces from the door, we are stopped again by the hulking form of Hyde. The fire has wreaked havoc on his body. His hair is burned off, his skin scorched and blistered. Vengeance and anger fill his eyes, his next actions telegraphed by his posture and obvious demeanour.

The monster intercedes again, catching hold of Hyde and throwing him from our path.

"Now," it urges us, "flee!'

I have a bullet left in my pistol, and for a fleeting moment consider if it will be any use to the monster in its fight. In the end, the choice is made for me when Holmes grabs my jacket and hauls me, bodily, through the tannery door. My last sight before I turn towards the night and the cold air is of the monster hurling itself towards Hyde, its ragged coat alight.

Smoke funnels upwards in the night sky, blighting the moon and casting a murky, grey shadow. In it, the tannery burns. Fire engulfs it and the vats cook off in a series of sporadic, slightly m.u.f.fled explosions.

Sitting on the edge of Greenland Dock, Holmes and I watch the blaze, grateful to be alive.

"Hyde and Jekyll," I say, coughing up a wad of charcoal-coloured phlegm.

"Jekyll and Hyde," Holmes ripostes.

"They were one and the same."

Holmes nods. His face is black from the smoke and soot, and I have never seen him looking quite so dishevelled. I expect I look no better.

"Jekyll possessed the intelligence, Hyde the brawn."

"So where does Victor Frankenstein fit into all of this?"

Part of the tannery collapses as the flames reach new heights into the London sky.

"We may never find out," Holmes admits, "but I suspect Jekyll wanted the best of both worlds, Watson. He wanted Hyde, he wanted to capture that brute strength, that power and fort.i.tude, and marry it to his own intellect. Frankenstein's research was key to that. You saw his earlier attempts at perfecting the formula."

I am grimly reminded of the b.l.o.o.d.y remains in Brick Lane, and again in the tannery when Jekyll's bodyguard and test subject exploded.

"Victor Frankenstein created life from death, Watson," Holmes went on, "who knows what else he discovered before he died."

"Now we will never know."

"Perhaps," says Holmes, producing his pipe from his inside pocket and lighting up.

"How can you smoke at a time like this?" I ask.