Neil Gaiman - Shadows over Baker Street

Dr. Montleroy sought me out as the afternoon waned into evening. “I’m going to lose James unless I can get him to help, and quickly. I may anyway, but there’s still time to try.”

“What does his father say?” I croaked.

“He knows,” Montleroy answered, with a glance over his shoulder to the white-faced man. “It is one son or neither.”

I nodded once. “Take all the water. Go.”

We pulled Conrad down off the exhausted gelding over James’s feeble protests, and the good doctor swung up behind. Moran poured water for the horse into his hat, and the animal sucked it up in a single desperate draft. “Go like the wind,” he said to it, and slapped it hard across the flank. It startled and bolted, Montleroy and James bent low over its neck.

“Godspeed,” said Miss Adler from beside me. I glanced around in surprise. It was then that I noticed that the Count was missing.

No one had seen him fall behind, and we could not turn back. Mr. Waterhouse, von Hammerstein, and I took turns carrying Conrad, who drifted in a fever. He mumbled strange phrases in a language I had never heard, but which seemed to discomfit Moran’s prisoner greatly.

The prisoner attempted to speak to me, but I could only shake my head at his foreign tongue. He tried von Hammerstein as well, to equally little avail, and Moran did not interfere. I had the distinct impression that the colonel watched out of the corner of his eye, as if observing our faces for any sign of comprehension, but the chattering of the monkeys meant more, at least to me.

With her paramour gone, Miss Adler stalked up to the front of the group. It was she who first identified the clearing where we had killed the tigress. We paused for breath, and the prisoner threw himself down in the long grass and panted.

“Two more miles to the river,” she said, in a flat and hopeless tone, resting the Winchester’s stock on the ground. Moran glanced from her to the rapidly darkening sky and grunted. Waterhouse’s face clenched in terror and I knew it was not for himself that he feared.

“We could try to run it,” offered von Hammerstein. He shifted the still form of Conrad Waterhouse on his shoulder and stared out toward the grasslands, a calculating look on his face. “Could you keep up, miss?”

The woman frowned. “I daresay.” She bent down to unlace her boots while Rodney held the Winchester. She stepped out of them and knotted them over her shoulder.

The monkeys fell silent. The prisoner started up, eyes staring, and he cried aloud— “Ia! Ia Hastur cf’ayah ‘vugtlagln Hastur!”— and then, in mangled Hindi, “The burning one comes!” His eyes shimmered insanely. His voice was exultant. I wondered why he had not spoken Hindi before, at least to myself or Rodney.

“Run,” Moran shouted, yanking on the leather strap, and we ran.

The six of us, Moran dragging his captive, pelted out of the sal and down the slope of the land toward the riverbank. Around us the grass burned from gold to bloody in the light of the sunset. An enormous orb, already half concealed by the horizon, lit the scene like the plains of hell.

I ran with my hand clenched on my rifle, heedless of clutching grasses. Rodney darted ahead with one hand on von Hammerstein’s arm, nearly dragging the laden man. Conrad bounced on his back, voice raised in a peculiar shriek, raving a string of words that pained my ears.

The ground blurred under my feet, and as I passed Miss Adler I caught her elbow and dragged her along—she was running well, but my legs were longer. Ahead of me, I saw Moran give an assisting shove to Waterhouse and turn around to yank the leather strap again. His prisoner simply piled into him, swinging his hands like a club, teeth bared to bite.

“The dagger!” he shrieked in broken Hindi, foam flying from his teeth. “You fool, or it will have us all!”

Moran moved with the speed of a man half his age. “Go on,” he yelled at me as I moved to help him. He ducked under the prisoner’s swing and brought his gun butt up under the man’s jaw. As I pelted past, the Arab tumbled boneless to the ground, and Moran raised his weapon.

I flinched, expecting a shot, but Moran snarled as he hauled the prisoner to his feet.

I caught my breath in my teeth. It hurt. “Not . . . going to make it,” Miss Adler groaned between breaths.

A lone tree rose before us as I stole a glance over my shoulder. We were less than halfway to the river, and I could see the red glow of the sunset matched by an answering inferno only yards behind.

Von Hammerstein and Waterhouse had reached the same conclusion, for as we drew up we saw them crouched in the grass. Rodney stood just behind them, his eyes very white and wide in his mahogany face. He clapped my shoulder as I passed him, and I realized that he was younger than Conrad Waterhouse, over whose raving form he stood guard.

“Good lad,” I said to him, which seemed wholly inadequate, and I came and stood beside him. I remembered that we had given all our water to James, and nevertheless I found my fear lifting. I was resigned.

Moran came up to us and took in the situation with a nod. We turned at bay, the devil before us and the sunset at our backs.

It let us see it coming—a glowing specter in the darkness, a demon of flame and fear. It leaped through the tall grass toward me—a bound of perhaps forty feet. I caught a very clear view of it as it gathered itself. Flaming eyes glittered at me with unholy intelligence in the moment before it leaped.

I felt something rise in my heart under that regard, an antique horror such as I had never known, and I heard Waterhouse whimper—or perhaps I myself moaned aloud in fear. Words seemed to form in my mind, words of invocation that I both knew and did not know, powerful and ancient and evil as maggots in my soul: “Iä! Iä Hastur . . .”

I emptied the .534 at it, to no effect. Beside me, I heard von Hammerstein’s gun choke and roar twice. He reached for a second one. The reek of powder hung thick upon the air.

The beast was in midair—it was among us—Conrad had risen to his feet with madness on his face and thrown himself at Rodney. Waterhouse caught the blow, staggered, and bore the boy over onto the ground, kneeling on his chest and bearing his hands down only with great difficulty. Rodney never flinched.

I dropped the empty weapon. “Boy. Gun! ”

Rodney snapped the Purdey into my hand, and I aimed along the barrel with a prayer to Almighty God on my lips. Moran was distracted from his prisoner, shaking his weapon loose and raising it in a futile and beautiful gesture. His luxurious mustache draped across the scrollwork on the gun as he sighted, and he placed two shots directly into the beast’s eye as it lunged.

The flaming paw hurt not at all. It struck me high on the thigh, and I felt a distinct shattering sensation, but there was no pain. I lost the Purdey, and I saw poor Rodney hurled aside by a second thunderous blow. He fell like a broken doll, and he did not rise. Mr. Waterhouse started up to defend his boy, and was knocked backward fifteen feet into the tree before its next blow crushed von Hammerstein against the earth. I felt the impact from where I lay.

Moran turned with his gun, coolly tracking the Creature. He did not see his prisoner rise up from the ground clutching a rock in his bound hands, and my shout came too late. Even as he spun, the villain laid him out.

Then, suddenly, Miss Irene Adler was standing behind the prisoner, something glittering in her hand. She drew her arm back, and with a Valkyrie shout she plunged the Count’s dagger deep into the Arab’s back. The man stiffened, shuddered, and clawed, tied hands thrust into the air as if to drag Miss Adler off his back. I was eerily reminded of the poor, wounded elephant.