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It is the immensity, I believe. The impossibility of our task. The awful hugeness of those above.
But I am woolgathering. Forgive me.
My companion has often accused me of undue sentimentality, and I will own that this claim is not unfounded. In the past, I had some aspirations of being a literary man, but my circumstances did not permit me to profitably exercise my skill with a pen. My chosen profession left me little time for scribbling fanciful crowd-pleasing tales. And the cause to which I am now committed makes even idle musings such as these an intolerable risk.
However, our last venture required that I should write some small dramas for the stage. I will not deny that this pleased me, and I suspect that this was my companion’s intention—despite his insistence that a collection of original works was necessary for our purposes.
I suppose I could begin with how we met, my companion and I, when I was a broken man, defeated and disillusioned by my campaign in Afghanistan. I could tell of our first adventure together—if such a word may be used to describe that ordeal—and of what followed after. I will not soon forget our encounter with the Giant Rat of Sumatra...
But there is no time. I do not know how long we have here.
If I can say nothing else, I will say this: There are those who would have it that I was seduced to this cause, for I had once sworn to serve Queen and country. They are wrong. I have long had my own ideas regarding the Ones who would call Themselves our masters. All my companion did was enable me to take action, when I would have otherwise spent the remainder of my life mired in futile horror and despair.
I believed such seditious thoughts would be my last, there in the Afghan hills, but the Jezail bullet that entered my left leg saved my life. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have perished like so many others if I had been able to descend into the caves instead of lying bleeding on the slopes.
I remember the screams. I remember one officer who had, against all odds, survived the long dark, though he remained insensate for far longer than I, deathly silent but for the occasional cry in the night. I wonder what became of him.
My mind wanders again. I do not often have the luxury to reminisce, and it is rarer still that I find myself inclined to recall my military history.
This last venture allowed us to proceed at a more leisurely pace than usual, which is, perhaps, why I find myself able to think of more than the work that is in front of me. My companion was content to play the long game, treading the boards for over a year all over the Continent, and the results were better than I had dared hope at the outset. It took him many months to cultivate the creature’s trust, appealing to the pride and greed of Their kind until he was finally able to lure him to the house in Shoreditch.
Prince Franz Drago is no more. I have seen to it myself.
This is not a confession. That would necessitate some measure of guilt or acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and there was nothing wrong in ridding the world of one such as he. My only remorse is that we did not strike sooner, and the only sin I will admit to is taking pride in the act.
Our goal can be achieved. This proves it. The Old Ones are not so invulnerable as they would have us believe, nor is humanity so weak. The Restoration is possible, and I am willing to wade in oceans of ichor to make it so.
In the normal course of things, we would have fled as soon as the deed was done, flushed with victory and stained with the inhuman creature’s blood, like the hunting dogs from which we take our name. But my companion counseled patience. We were being pursued, he said, by an adversary who was very nearly his equal, and drawing attention to ourselves by taking sudden flight would have guaranteed our capture.
Knowing my companion as I do, this was not a statement to be taken lightly. He prizes his intellect above all else, justifiably so, and any man he considers to be on his level must be a terrible danger indeed.
Imagine, therefore, my surprise at his not only engaging this Moriarty in conversation, but also disguising himself as a cabbie to drive the man and his taciturn friend to their lodgings. And as if that had not already been enough of a foolhardy risk, he left this morning to deliver a message to the villain!
I would have gone with him, but he would not hear of it. There was no need, said he, for both of us to dangle as bait. Then he smiled, telling me it would be but the work of a moment, and I was not to worry myself over so small a thing. Had I not better conserve my energies for later?
It is difficult to refuse any of his requests, for they are always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery. Nevertheless, I did worry. I was unable to rest easy, pacing our own rooms deep in the Rookery of St. Giles until I again heard his tread upon the stair much later in the day.
“Was that really necessary, my dear?” I asked him as soon as he had locked the door behind him.
He looked thoughtful for a while, as he began to strip off, for the last time, the guise of the actor Sherry Vernet.
“It has bought us some time,” he said at last. “The London constabulary now thinks that we have fled Albion, and they will not look for us in the heart of the city.”
“And Moriarty?”
“He may suspect we are here. I would not take a confessed traitor at his word, if our positions were reversed, and it must be assumed that he has a working knowledge of suitable hiding-places in London for the criminal classes.” He must have caught the look of extreme horror on my face, for he left off emptying his pockets and approached the chair where I sat. “Yes, it may have been unwise in the extreme to leave him a letter in my own hand. I wished to obtain the measure of the man, but in doing so I have given him ample opportunity to learn mine. But I don’t think he will pursue us. Not yet.”
His words perturbed me. I had sensed from him an unusual keenness and intensity in this business with the consulting detective. It was not the air of a predator stalking his prey that I have so often witnessed, but rather that of a tiger who has come upon a rival beast in his jungle: neither will rest until one of them has killed the other.
My companion, as ever, knew my mind without my having to speak a word. “Come now, that day of reckoning is a long way off. A very long way off, I hope, since I am to resurrect Altamont to replace Vernet.”
If he hoped to distract me, he succeeded. “Must it be Altamont?” I cried. “You know I loathe that character.”
“I endeavor to please you in all things, but it can only be Altamont and no other. He is already known in the secret loyalist societies of Chicago and New York, and until we are safely ensconced with Miss Hatty Dornan in California, there is no other name that will secure our passage through the New World. Tell me,” he continued, smiling impishly, “what is it about him that you find so objectionable? His blind devotion to the Old Ones? The goatee? Or the war he has apparently declared on the Queen’s English?”
“The vulgar personality he makes you adopt,” I answered without hesitation.
“You say this after a year of living among actors! My dearest Watson, you amaze me.” He laid a conciliatory hand on my shoulder. “If it is any comfort to you, it will be some time before we can be on our way.”
I laced my fingers through his. “And we need to stop in Brussels before we cross the Atlantic. Our information must be passed on to the Belgian detective.”
“Indeed. He will need to exert his little grey cells to the utmost with Moriarty on the Restorationists’ case, and his insight into the Russian situation will be most useful to us, if we are to pursue Black Peter as planned. He may also be able to harbor us for a time, while I cultivate my goatee.”
He was teasing me—Monsieur Poirot, with his impeccably waxed moustaches, would never countenance such an affront to masculine grooming, and my companion would never offend his sensibilities so—yet I was unable to hide my outrage. “Confound it, Holmes, I will shave you myself if you attempt to grow that monstrosity before it is needful!”
“Ah, so it is the goatee you detest,” he laughed. “Well, it is not upon my chin yet, dear one.”
And, but for the bristles a man has at the end of the day, his chin was indeed bare when he kissed me. He did not mind my own whiskers when I returned his affections, but I like to think that they are less offensive than the ridiculous beard he affects as Altamont.
It is well past midnight now, and I am writing by the light of a guttering candle flame and that of the crimson moon coming in through the window. I have spent longer on this than I intended. My hand cramps; I have almost exhausted my supply of ink; and my old wound throbs with a dull persistence.
No one has come seeking us yet, and we may be able to safely remain here till morning.
I should destroy these papers.
I could not tell why I wrote this account at all, save, perhaps, to put my thoughts on this affair in some semblance of order. If it is found on me, it will spell our deaths, and there is nowhere for me to hide it without chancing discovery.
Do I hope that, in some distant future, I might be able to share this story and earn my companion’s good name the reputation I know it deserves? He is the best and wisest man whom I have ever known, and it pains me daily that he must lurk in the shadows, unknown and feared by the world he is trying to save.
No.
No, I do not dream of glory. That was a younger man’s fancy, and I left it behind me in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan. But I know my companion has taken an interest in bees: he studies them in his spare time, and I suspect that he does not realize how often he speaks of their cultivation. And I have always been fond of the South Downs.
One day, when our work is done, we may be able to spend a quiet evening in Sussex, in a little cottage where we have beehives in the garden, with the light of the moon shining down upon us, pure and silver as it was before the Old Ones came.
That is all I want. But I will put that dream—and this pen—aside for now.
My companion stirs, and he calls me back to bed.
J.W.
The Rookery of St. Giles
London, New Albion, 1881.