Red Leech

Chapter Thirteen

The train was in chaos. Every single passenger appeared to be shouting at the guard, trying to find out why they had changed train lines, why they had stopped and where they were. The guard didn’t seem to be sure — he was reassuring people, but there was an expression on his face suggesting that he was out of his depth.

“Unscheduled stop!" he kept shouting. “Please do not disembark here.”

On the platform, the two men were still standing with Virginia and Matty. They were waiting for something. Waiting for him, he suspected. Off to one side he could see John Wilkes Booth. He was standing upright, but he was slowly rocking from side to side and his eyes weren’t tracking anything in particular. Probably drugged to keep him quiet.

One of the men — one he’d never seen before — moved his right hand out from behind his back momentarily. He was holding a gun.

Sherlock didn’t see that he had much choice, so he stepped from the train, down the short stairway to the veranda of the house.

Towards the back of the train he saw that the men who had been waiting on the platform were hauling boxes out of the last carriage. They looked like the boxes he’d seen in the garden of the house at Godalming — the ones where he thought he’d seen something moving inside. As the boxes were removed the men carried them away to a waiting cart. They seemed to be cautious about getting their fingers too close to the gaps between the slats. Two of them cursed as their box suddenly lurched and nearly fell to the ground, although Sherlock couldn’t see what had made its weight shift. Maybe something inside had moved.

Although he didn’t see any signal being given, the train began to heave itself away from the house with a deafening clanking as the metal connections between the carriages were pulled tight. It moved slowly at first, but increased in speed as it got further away.

“Where’s Ives?” Berle asked Sherlock, raising his voice above the noise of the train. Berle was holding Virginia’s arm with his right hand. With his left he was holding a carrying handle attached to a box about the size of a football.

“He dropped off,” Sherlock replied. He could feel his heart thudding within his chest but he tried to keep calm and project an appearance of control.

Virginia and Matty were both staring at him in concern. He looked at each of them in turn, seeking to reassure them that everything was going to be all right, but he didn’t believe that and he was sure they didn’t either.

“You mean he fell off,” Berle said. “You killed him!"

“Ah can smell smoke,” Booth said from behind them, with his eyes still closed. His voice was distant, dreamy.

“Quiet!" growled the third man, the one holding Matty, “or I’ll take a brandin’ iron to the other side of your face!" He’d probably been subjected to Booth’s mania all the way from New York — perhaps all the way from Southampton — and was obviously getting towards his breaking point. Sherlock studied him for a moment. He’d not had a chance to see this man on the train. He was built like a boxer, and wore trousers of denim, and a denim waistcoat over a collarless shirt. He had a bright red bandanna knotted round his neck.

“Don’t bait him, Rubinek,” Berle cautioned. “Duke still needs him.”

The man named Rubinek switched his glare to Sherlock. “What about him?” he growled. “Duke don’t need him for nothin’, an’ he admitted he killed Ives.” He bought his right hand from behind his back, the hand that wasn’t holding Matty, and let the revolver he was holding point towards Sherlock.

“And what about Gilfillan?” Berle asked. “Is he dead too? He sent us a telegram.”

“He’s in police custody,” Sherlock answered. He wasn’t sure if that was strictly true or not, but it should be, by now.

Berle closed his eyes for a moment. “This is going from bad to worse,” he said quietly. “Duke isn’t going to be pleased, and I’ve heard about what happens when Duke isn’t pleased.”

“We ain’t got much choice,” Rubinek said practically. “The train’s gone, an’ we’re here. So let’s get rid of the kids an’ go see Duke.”

“We’re not getting rid of the kids,” Berle replied quietly, but with authority. With Ives gone he was obviously in charge. “Duke’ll want to question them — see how much they know. Then he’ll probably give them to his pets.”

“I still want to kill them myself,” Rubinek muttered, like a spoilt kid who had been denied a biscuit.

“At least we’ve got Booth and this thing,” Berle said, raising the box he held to eye level and staring at it bale-fully “Let’s hope that’s enough.” He sighed. “OK, let’s get this over with.”

Berle led the way down the veranda to where Sherlock noticed a round table had been set up in front of a pair of French windows. A white tablecloth had been placed over it, and there was a decanter of what looked like orange juice, a plate of bread rolls and seven glasses sitting in the centre. Seven wrought-iron chairs, painted white, were arranged around the table. A white parasol had been stuck through a hole in its centre, providing shade from the burning sun.

“Parasol”. The word stuck in Sherlock’s mind as they walked down the veranda towards the table. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what. That was the trouble with memory, he thought — it could only hold so much information. If only there was some way of deleting all the memories a person didn’t need and replacing them with the important ones. Perhaps he ought to just write down everything that might be important to him in a notebook, or a set of notebooks, listed alphabetically so he could find things quickly when he needed to.

He was just trying to distance himself from what was going on by thinking about something else, but his attempt was broken when Rubinek pushed him towards one of the chairs with the barrel of his revolver. “Sit,” the man growled. Sherlock obeyed. Matty and Virginia were placed on either side of him, then Berle and John Wilkes Booth sat to Virginia’s left and Rubinek sat to Matty’s right.

That left one chair, Sherlock noticed. Presumably that was reserved for the mysterious Duke.

“My father will track us down, if you don’t release us,” Virginia said.

“Your father’s the big guy in the white suit?” Berle looked from Virginia to Matty and then to Sherlock. “He’s not father to all of you, is he? I’d not seen you all together before.” He looked more closely at Matty. “We took you because we thought it would stop him from coming after us. Shows how much we knew. We should have taken the girl.”

“He still would have come after you,” Virginia said. “That’s what he does. He doesn’t take orders well.”

Berle was about to say something, but the French doors leading into the house from the veranda suddenly opened. Two servants in immaculate black tailcoated jackets held them open while another figure emerged into the sunlight.

The man was tall — over six feet, Sherlock estimated, and probably closer to seven — and painfully thin. Everything he was wearing was white — tailored suit, waistcoat, shirt, boots, broad-brimmed hat and gloves — with the exception of the band that encircled the crown of his hat and the bootlace tie that hung down from the collar of his shirt and disappeared behind his waistcoat. They were both made of black leather. For a moment, Sherlock thought that his face was either incredibly pale or covered with white make-up, but then he realized that the man was wearing a mask made of porcelain that was so exquisitely made that it looked like a fine-featured, sensitive face. The hair that emerged from beneath the hat and fell around the edges of the mask was so blond that it was itself almost white.

The eyes that stared through the holes in the mask were not white, however. The irises were so dark that they were almost black, but the area around the irises was bloodshot. The effect, set against the pristine whiteness of the mask, was to make the eyes seem as if they were glowing red.

The man’s wrists, emerging from the cuffs of his shirt, were almost impossibly thin. Sherlock wondered if it would be possible to break his bones just by shaking his hand. Not that the man was extending his hand to be shaken. Both of his arms were pulled away from his body as he moved, with black leather leashes leading away from his wrists into the darkness of the house. And something was pulling those leashes tight.

He stopped just outside the doors. Sherlock thought he could see something moving behind him, at the ends of the leashes, but he wasn’t sure what. Some kind of dogs, presumably, but big.

“Dr Berle,” the man said from behind the mask. His voice was light, high and almost whispery. “Captain Rubinek. Mr Booth. And our distinguished guests, of course. I am afraid I do not know your names. Please, in the interests of polite conversation, would you be so kind as to introduce yourselves.”

“I’m Virginia Crowe,” Virginia said.

Matty scowled. “Matthew Arnatt.”

Ah,” the man said. A friend from across the sea.” He glanced at Sherlock with his red gaze. And you, sir? Who are you?”

“Sherlock Scott Holmes,” Sherlock replied.

Another British visitor. How... entertaining.”

Sherlock’s attention was drawn to the hands that held the leashes. There was something wrong with them, and it took him a moment to work out what it was. There were fingers missing from both hands — the little finger on the left hand and the fourth finger on the right hand, but the gloves had actually been tailored without those fingers, so there was no empty finger hanging loose or any material pinned back.

There was something else strange about the hands as well. They were as thin as the rest of the man, but there were lumps, pushing at the material of the gloves. What did those hands look like, beneath the gloves?

“You have us at a disadvantage,” Sherlock said, switching his attention back to the man’s porcelain mask and trying to keep his voice calm. “May I ask what your name is?”

“I am Duke Balthassar,” the man said, his voice as dry and papery as autumn leaves. “That’s “Duke” as in a first name, not “Duke” as in an honorific like “Count” or “Prince”. Now please, help yourselves to orange juice and bread rolls. I assure you, the juice is perfectly fresh and the rolls are still warm from the oven.”

Virginia reached for the decanter. “Let me pour,” she said.

Duke Balthassar moved out further into the sunshine. The leashes in his hand pulled tight, and then reluctantly two animals were pulled out on to the veranda.

Virginia spilt the orange juice on the white tablecloth.

For a moment, Sherlock didn’t know what they were. They looked like sleek, brown cats, but their heads were at a level with Duke Balthassar’s waist. Their eyes were black, and their tails flicked restlessly as their gaze moved from person to person.

“Cougars? Virginia breathed.

“Indeed,” Balthassar said. He sounded pleased. “I would say “Don’t let them scare you”, but that would be bad advice. Do let them scare you.”

“I didn’t know,” Virginia said, and Sherlock could hear the tremor in her voice, “that cougars could be tamed.”

“Tamed?” Balthassar said. “No, they cannot. But like all creatures, humans included, they respond to fear. And they fear me.” He said something in a foreign language, and the cougars scrunched themselves down on the veranda, settling down with their heads on their paws.

Sherlock could see the teeth in those not-quite-closed mouths. Those teeth could bite a man’s hand off his arm, and the claws that he could see barely sheathed could rip the arm itself out of the socket. “How do you make a cougar fear you?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“The same way you make a man fear you,” Balthassar said. One of his black-clad servants pulled the remaining chair out, and he sat daintily, crossing his grasshopper-thin legs. “A mixture of pain, and examples of what will happen to them if they do not obey you. They have a memory. They remember the examples, and they act accordingly. Or you dispose of them and start again with another animal, and the act of disposal, if it is done properly and if it lasts for long enough, itself acts as an example of what will happen if the new animal does not obey you. You can leave the body lying around for quite some time.”

There was silence around the table for a moment as everyone watched the cougars.

“I like your train,” Matty said eventually.

The porcelain mask did not move, but Sherlock sensed that the man was smiling underneath. “You are very kind. It proves useful if I need to attend meetings in New York, or elsewhere. I do so hate having to take a carriage to the nearest station. The roads are bumpy, and there is so much dust. It’s far more preferable if the train comes to me.”

“How did you arrange that?” Sherlock asked.

“I provide the train company with a great deal of business,” Balthassar explained. “I am an entrepreneur. I have a number of travelling exhibitions and circuses, taking exotic animals around this fine country, and those exhibitions and circuses travel on our own trains. When I told them I wanted a spur line put in, and signals that would allow me to divert any train to my house, they agreed.” He paused. “Eventually After I provided some examples of what would happen if they did not agree with me.”

Sherlock tried to imagine what kind of examples Balthassar was talking about, and then he tried not to. The pictures were too vivid.

“So you diverted this train because your men were on board,” Virginia asked.

“Indeed. They had cabled ahead to tell me they were on board, and with several precious cargoes.” He glanced across at John Wilkes Booth, who was staring at a glass of orange juice as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “Mr Booth here is one of them. I have been waiting for some time for him to return to this once-glorious country. I have plans for him. Another cargo was unloaded earlier, and is even now being introduced to its new surroundings.” He switched his gaze to the box which Berle was holding on his lap. “And I believe that this box contains the final one. Am I right, Dr Berle?”

Berle nodded, and licked his dry lips. “It is, Duke. Do you—"

“Not yet, Doctor. I have been waiting a long time for this particular package to arrive. I want to savour the moment.” He paused, and looked around the table. “I do, however, note the absence of the estimable Messrs Ives and Gilfillan,” he said mildly. “Where are they?”

Sherlock knew that he had two choices: he could either let Berle tell Balthassar that Gilfillan was in custody and Ives was dead, or he could admit it first and take the initiative. He decided to take the initiative. “Mr Gilfillan is in prison back in England,” he said. “Mr Ives I killed just now by knocking him off the train.” He stared at the twin eyeholes in Duke Balthassar’s mask. “Oh, and I also disposed of a steward on the SS Scotia who tried to kill me as well. He was being paid by Mr Ives.”

A silence settled over the table, broken only by the rumbling breaths of the two cougars. They watched Sherlock intently. Somehow they knew that there was a battle for dominance going on between him and Duke Balthassar.

“How very enterprising of you,” Balthassar said eventually. “Why exactly did you kill them?”

“Maybe I wanted to set an example to your other servants,” Sherlock said levelly “To make them fear me.”

Balthassar laughed: a clear, high-pitched sound that made the cougars cringe backwards. “How very enterprising,” he said. “I think I like you, Master Sherlock Scott Holmes. Not enough to keep you alive, but I do like you.”

“Ain’t you goin’ to do anythin’ to him?” the big man, Rubinek, demanded.

“For that?” Balthassar asked. “No. If they were stupid enough to let a child get the better of them then good riddance. They have saved me the trouble of dealing with them myself. No, young Master Sherlock here will not see the sunset, but not because he thinned the ranks of my servants. No, he and his friends will die because I have no use for them here.”

Silence fell across the veranda.

“So,” Balthassar said quietly after a few moments, “now that we have all become acquainted, and now that you’re comfortable and you have refreshments, please be so good as to tell me how much the authorities know about my plans.”

“We don’t know anything,” Sherlock replied.

“You are wrong on two counts,” Balthassar said. “On the first count, you obviously know something, as you have managed to interfere with my schedules and kill two of my staff. Children don’t usually stumble into something this big, or if they do they back away very quickly. You, as I understand it, were first seen in the house in England where Mr Booth was being... kept safe. That, at least, is where Mr Ives and Dr Berle first saw you. The question is, why were you at the house in the first place? Were you there by accident, or were you looking for Mr Booth?”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say something, but Balthassar gestured to him to keep quiet.

“On the second count,” he continued in the same level, pleasant tone of voice, “it doesn’t matter what you know. The matter is of no interest to me. I have you all here, and none of you will escape. Within the next few hours, you will all die, and your knowledge will die with you. That I promise. No, the only important question is, what is known by the girl’s father, Amyus Crowe, and what is known by the authorities in England and here, in America?” He paused, and turned the porcelain mask towards Sherlock. “Tell me, and tell me now, before I lose my patience.”

Despite the hot sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky, Sherlock felt a cold breeze blow across the veranda.

“If you’re going to kill us anyway,” Sherlock said carefully, “then why should we tell you anything? It’s not like telling you is going to save our lives. You’ve already said it’s not.”

“A good point, well made,” Balthassar conceded. “This country is built on the principles of trade and negotiation. Very well; let me make you an offer.”

He turned the porcelain mask towards Virginia. “Please, extend your hand,” he said.

Virginia glanced at Sherlock, panic in her eyes. He didn’t know what she should do: obey Balthassar or ignore him? Sherlock didn’t know what the outcome of either action would be. Despite his pleasant exterior, Balthassar seemed to be walking on a knife-edge between civility and madness.

“How tedious,” Balthassar said. “Mr Rubinek?”

Rubinek leaned across from his chair and grabbed hold of Virginia’s wrist, stretching her arm out straight and letting her hand point towards Balthassar.

“Excellent,” Balthassar said. He spoke a few guttural words in a language that Sherlock couldn’t identify.

One of the cougars stood up and padded across to Virginia, skin sliding smoothly over slabs of muscle as it moved. She froze: breath suspended.

The cougar opened its mouth and stretched its neck out until Virginia’s hand was inside its mouth. Rubinek let go and moved back into his chair. The big cat closed its mouth until its teeth were pressing into the flesh of Virginia’s wrist.

“One of two things will happen now,” Balthassar said conversationally. “Either you will tell me what I want to know or my cougar will bite the girl’s hand off.” The porcelain mask remained impassive, but Sherlock could sense a smile behind its smooth surface. “His name is Sherman, by the way. The other one is called Grant. My little joke.”

Virginia’s eyes were fixed on Sherlock.

“I’ll tell you,” Matty said urgently.

“No,” Balthassar said gently. “I want Master Sherlock to tell me. He, I perceive, is the leader of this little group. He is the one who needs to learn to fear me. He is the one who needs to be trained.” He paused for a moment. “You see, there are various ways to die. A bullet to the head is quick and painless, I believe. Bleeding to death is slow, and painful. You do not have the choice as to whether you will die or not: I have taken that choice away from you. You do, however, have a choice as to how you die: quickly or slowly, in agony or in peace.”

“Very well,” Sherlock said, heart pounding in his chest. “Call the cougar off and I’ll answer your question.”

“No,” Balthassar said. “Answer the question and I will call off the cougar.”

The tension in the air was almost visible. Sherlock knew that he and Balthassar were testing their willpower against one another. The trouble was, Balthassar had all the advantages.

“The authorities know about John Wilkes Booth,” he said. “They know he’s not dead, that he was bought to England from Japan, and that he’s here in America now. The British Government know that, and so does the Pinkerton Agency. I presume they will tell the American Government. They don’t know what you intend doing with him.”

“Good,” Balthassar said. “More.”

“There is no more!" Sherlock shouted.

“There is always more. Do the authorities know about me, for instance?”

“No.”

“So you ended up on that train by accident? I don’t think so.”

“We were following them!" Sherlock said, gesturing towards Berle and Rubinek. “We were trying to get Matty back.”

“And were you with anybody else on the train?” Balthas-sar’s voice was calm but remorseless.

“No. We were by ourselves.”

“How remarkably resourceful of you.” Balthassar paused, and Sherlock got the impression that he was debating whether to tell Sherman to rip Virginia’s hand off anyway.

Sherlock didn’t bother praying. No outside entity was going to help them now. They were on their own, depending on the whims of a madman.

The thought gave him an idea. Maybe he could turn that against the man in the porcelain mask.

Balthassar gave a curt order, and the cougar reluctantly pulled its head back so that its teeth were no longer pressing into Virginia’s flesh. Her whole body seemed to wilt. It gazed at her for a moment, then padded back to Balthassar’s side.

“I have a question,” Sherlock said.

Balthassar gazed at him, eyes red and black behind the holes in the mask. “Did you not understand the rules? I ask questions and you answer them, and that guarantees you a quick and painless death. That was our bargain.”

“But we only have your word for that,” Sherlock pointed out. “I think you’re going to get all the answers you can out of us and then torture us anyway, just because you would enjoy it. On that basis, we don’t gain anything by cooperating apart from a short delay before the torture starts.”

Balthassar mused for a while. “A logical analysis,” he conceded. “You do only have my word, and you don’t know how good my word is. What is your counterproposal?”

“We will take you at your word,” Sherlock said, “ifyou answer our questions as well.”

“Interesting,” Balthassar mused. “I don’t stand to lose anything on the deal, and I gain more information. On the other hand you don’t lose anything, as I still get to choose the manner of your deaths, but you do gain information, and that apparently matters to you. So yes, I agree. Ask your questions.”

“What do you need John Wilkes Booth for?” Sherlock asked. “Why is the fact that he’s alive and here in America important enough that people need to die to keep it a secret?”

“Oh,” Balthassar said calmly, “people need to die for all kinds of reasons, few of them important. But I like you, Sherlock Scott Holmes. You have spirit. So I’m going to tell you.” He glanced at Berle and Rubinek. After all, they won’t understand. They just want their money.”

“Hey—” Berle started, then subsided when Balthassar stared at him.

“I realize you are British, but even you must have heard about the War Between the States,” Balthassar started.

Sherlock nodded. “My brother said it was about slavery” He glanced at Virginia. “Her father said it was more complicated than that.”

“Her father is correct. In the end it was about self-determination. Eight years ago we had an election in which the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, used as the basis of their campaign a pledge to stop slavery from expanding beyond the states in which it already existed. Lincoln won the election, and that resulted in seven Southern states declaring their secession from the Union, even before he took office — South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. They formed a new country, the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as President. Within two months, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee had joined them.”

“What’s “secession”?” Matty asked.

“Secession,” Balthassar explained, “is when a state withdraws from the Union of States and declares that it will set itself up as a separate entity. Secession is a right we believe to be guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence, but both the outgoing administration of James Buchanan and the incoming administration of Abraham Lincoln disagreed. They considered it rebellion and declared it illegal.” He sighed. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you believe that a man can keep slaves or not. What we were fighting for was our right to set up our own nation, separate from the one Lincoln was leading, and doing things our own way. If slavery hadn’t been the cause then it would have been something else.”

“But you lost,” Sherlock pointed out. “Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman beat Robert E. Lee in battle. He surrendered.”

“He had no right to surrender,” Balthassar snapped. “He did not have the authority. The war goes on, even if it’s not acknowledged as such. The Government in Exile of the Confederacy still seeks to establish freedom from the oppressive regime of the Union for those states who wish it.”

Sherlock’s attention was distracted by a movement of Balthassar’s hand. No, not of his hand, Sherlock realized, but on his hand. The material of the white glove on his left hand was flexing slightly, just where one of the bumps that Sherlock had noticed earlier was located. As he watched, the bump seemed to move, edging up the hand towards the wrist. What in heaven’s name was it?

“Ah,” Balthassar said, noticing Sherlock’s horrified gaze, “I see you have noticed one of my little companions. Allow me to make a more formal introduction.”

He reached towards his left hand with his right, and took a grip of the top of the glove. With a firm, careful movement, he pulled it off.

Virginia gasped, while Matty made a sound of revulsion.

Balthassar’s hand — minus its little finger — and his wrist were covered with what looked for a moment like boils, but which Sherlock realized were living things, like slugs. Their skin was a reddish-grey and moist, and they seemed to pulse slightly as Sherlock watched.

“What are they?” he whispered.

Balthassar pulled off the other glove. His right hand — this one missing his fourth finger — was similarly covered with the slug-like creatures.

“Meet my doctors,” he said. “An entire medical team, dedicated to my well-being.”

Reaching up with his right hand, he undid a hook behind his left ear and pulled the porcelain mask off with one quick gesture.

The cougars hissed, and tried to back away across the veranda.

Balthassar’s face was gaunt, the cheekbones and nose prominent, but his features were difficult to distinguish beneath the tiny boneless creatures that clung to his white skin like black drops of tar.