“Whoever went to the trouble of procuring this guard dog must be very committed to their privacy,” Holmes mused.
“It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us both,” said Watson. “We were virtually on top of it.”
“Yes . . . mind you, reptiles draw their energy from sunlight.” Holmes glanced up at the low roof. “This creature hasn’t had that opportunity for several days. Fortunately for us, it’s rather sluggish at the moment.”
“It’ll still tear us to pieces if we try to get past it.”
“That’s true, Watson.”
“Do you think there’s another way?”
“It wouldn’t be logical for whoever’s hiding down here to only block off one access route, unless the other one was very well hidden.”
Watson raised his revolver again. “In which case, we’ve no option.”
“Did you shoot many crocodiles in India?”
“Not even one.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Holmes pushed the revolver down. “I doubt a small-caliber firearm like yours will do more than injure this creature. On the other hand, what it will do is alert our real foe. I fancy these sewers would make marvelous echo chambers.”
Reluctantly, Watson pocketed the Webley.
“There will be another way, however,” Holmes said. “I’m sure our bowler-hatted friend hasn’t chanced this animal’s jaws. Let’s backtrack a little.”
They retreated for several yards, until Holmes cast his light on a small grid placed among the arched bricks of the ceiling. Like everything else down there, it was thick with grime, and at the most only two feet wide by one foot high. Holmes examined it carefully.
“This is an overflow pipe,” he said after a moment.
“Connecting with what?”
“The Walbrook, I imagine.”
“The Walbrook?” Watson was startled. “But that river hasn’t been seen for centuries.”
“Then this is truly a voyage of discovery,” Holmes replied.
He thrust his long fingers through the grating and tugged at it experimentally. It came loose almost at once. “As I thought,” he said. “This has been forced open sometime quite recently.” The bolts that had once secured the grid in place had clearly been broken . . . amid the coat of rust, their jagged edges still shone with the luster of clean cast iron. “Which hopefully means our passage through will be unobstructed.”
“It isn’t likely to stay that way,” observed Watson, giving his friend a leg up. “Not when my bulk gets jammed inside it.”
Despite Watson’s misgivings, the next few moments were relatively comfortable. The connecting line to the Walbrook was no more than a tube, but it was smoothly cylindrical and, as Holmes had predicted, clear of debris. Though it was something of a squeeze, it took them only a minute or two to forge its ten or twelve feet, then jump down again into the brown, foaming waters of the subterranean river. Thigh-deep, they pressed on, having to duck under bars and buttresses, but at last emerging into a tall vaulted chamber that was something like a cathedral side chapel. Torrents of water poured into it from various high portals. The vast bulk of the flow then plunged away down a steep, circular shaft.
“What do you think that is?” Watson wondered. He indicated a narrow wooden door on a dry ledge.
“Possibly a relief room,” Holmes replied. “Where the flusher crews take a rest.” A moment passed, then he glanced at their “map.” “At least that may be what it once was used for. According to Harold Jobson, it now has a different purpose entirely.”
Watson glanced over Holmes’s shoulder and saw again the circle of red ink. Whatever it signified, they were now upon it.
The door was not locked. Immediately beyond it, however, there was a small antechamber, in which a grim warning awaited. There was a second door, and beside it three iron hooks had been hammered into the wall, presumably for equipment. Now, however, two dead bodies hung there.
Holmes and Watson approached them with trepidation. At first glance, the bodies resembled Egyptian mummies. They were swathed in linen bandages, their heads as well as their torsos, though most of the bindings were now loose and filthied. In both cases, the left arm had been unwrapped. Watson examined the exposed limbs. On the insides of both elbow joints, the black bruises of old puncture wounds were visible. The doctor had seen similar wounds on drug addicts, though these were larger and less numerous. More shocking to him was the fact that in either case, the fingers of the victim appeared to be webbed, and that hard patches of shiny, mottled skin occupied areas of the wrists and upper arms, which looked distinctly like scaling. Baffled, he made to uncover the first body’s head.
Holmes stopped him. “I shouldn’t,” he said quietly. “It might be more than you can stomach at this moment. In any case, our real business awaits us through here.” He indicated the next door.
With a crackle of grit, they were able to force it open, and found themselves at the head of a concrete ramp, which led down into a long, spacious chamber now lit by numerous candles. Possibly, the room had once been used for storage—the ramp suggested that wheelbarrows and the like were taken in and out—but now it had been customized into something like a laboratory. Several items of furniture were in there, mainly tables and sideboards, all laden with bottles and test tubes. Beside them, a variety of opened boxes and crates lay scattered. The next thing Holmes saw caused him to nudge Watson’s shoulder. The doctor glanced up and spotted a large cast-iron pipe branching across the ceiling from one side of the chamber to the other, snaking through a canopy of dust-laden cobwebs. Coupled together by bored-socket-and-spigot joints, it bespoke of masterly and care-filled engineering, which suggested only one thing . . .
“The water main,” said Holmes. “And so vulnerable. What would you say . . . ten feet up? One would only need a ladder and a hammer and chisel, and one could penetrate it with ease.”
But Watson had spied something else, something even more astonishing. Wordlessly, he drew Holmes’s attention to a figure at the extreme northern end of the chamber. At first the fellow had been invisible in the dim light, hidden behind an array of connected tubes and vessels, but now, as their eyes attuned to the gloom, they could make him out more clearly. He hadn’t yet noticed them, and appeared to be working feverishly beside a truckle bed on which another of the mummified patients lay under a thin blanket. The fellow was in late middle age, and wore his facial hair in a long, graying beard. He also wore round-lensed spectacles.
“Holmes . . .” said Watson in disbelief. “Holmes . . . that’s Professor Langley. Good God! He’s dead . . . he was burned to a crisp!”
“Someone was burned to a crisp,” Holmes replied. “Evidently not Langley.”
Langley—if it was Langley—was dusty and unshaven, and stripped to his grimy shirtsleeves. He appeared gaunt and sallow-faced with lack of sleep. He was currently operating a hand pump, attached to a rubber tube, which ran from an embedded syringe in the patient’s arm to a complex construction of valves, pipes, and glass jars set up on a low table beside him. With each depression of the pump, a thick stream of blood visibly jetted into the topmost jar. Several of the lower jars were already filled. At the base of the device, a thin, transparent substance was dripping into a flask.
“He’s transfusing blood,” said Watson. “But into what? It looks like a distillation unit.”
Holmes rubbed his chin. “He’s taking something from the blood. Some essence, perhaps . . .”