Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“You knew?” I asked Holmes. “Even when we were in the sewers you knew that Kane was one of these monstrous hybrids?”

“I guessed as much from his mannerisms,” he agreed. “The way he moved, the way he sniffed the air, his preternaturally sensitive hearing … On the subject of which, should we ever again find ourselves faced with an opponent able to hear a pin drop at a thousand yards kindly don’t call me by name, I may as well have left the brute a business card.”

I hadn’t been aware of having done so but there was little point in arguing. I apologised and squatted down to give Kane a closer examination. The head was exactly like that of a dog, a bull mastiff, given its size and crumpled features. The hair was short and black with a dusting of white on its muzzle.

“What luck you had that whistle,” I said. “How long do you think it will last?”

“Oh, next to no time at all I imagine,” he said, dashing off to fetch a heavy pair of derbies he kept on top of the bookcase. “And it wasn’t luck,” he shouted, climbing his way past his collection of foreign dictionaries. “We were promised monstrous animal hybrids and one of the professors has a device for disabling dogs. I would have been stupid not to take it.”

“And if Kane had been half cat?” I asked as he dropped back down and began to fix the handcuffs around the creature’s wrists.

“Well,” he said, getting to his feet, “then I would have dangled some thread in front of it.”

I had loosened its collar, eager to judge the physiognomy beneath its heavy coat. At the base of its furry throat there was a heavy knot of scar tissue betraying where a large incision had been made. Was it simply a dog’s head attached to a human body? Surely not, for now I realised the point of its heavy leather mittens. Removing one I was presented with the large black hand of an ape. Everything about Kane was built for strength and aggression it seemed.

The creature began to move, the eyelids flickering and opening slowly. I stood up and took a couple of steps back. Curiosity was one thing, but I didn’t want its teeth at our throats over my unanswered questions. There would be time enough for further examination once it was secure in police custody.

“Shall I send Billy to fetch the police?” I asked, referring to Holmes’ page boy. “Surely the sooner the brute is locked up the better?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Holmes, dropping into his armchair and lighting his pipe, “I rather thought it might be to all our advantages were we to pool our resources.” He looked pointedly at the creature between us, now clearly conscious and eyeing us both cautiously. “Wouldn’t you say, Kane?”

The voice when it came had an animal growl that, now I knew its biological background, was not in the least surprising. What I had taken before as a gruff tone was nothing less than the sound of human speech being forced through a dog’s throat.

“What advantage would there be for me?” it asked.

“Oh come now!” said Holmes. “What interest do I have in your petty underground activities? I’m dealing with a far bigger picture than street crime, however well-organised, however brutal. I want your creator, I want the man who made you who you are. Give me him and you can go free for all I care.”

“Holmes!” I exclaimed. This was hardly the first time my colleague had taken the law into his own hands, but there was a world of difference between defending those who had committed dark acts for the best of reasons and protecting a violent street criminal simply because his information might be useful. No doubt the police may have had cause to strike such bargains in the course of their investigations—I am not naive as to the methods they sometimes have to employ in order to achieve the greater good—but I was distinctly uncomfortable at being complicit in such an arrangement.

“We must look to the case as a whole, Watson. There is a great deal more at stake here than a little pickpocketing and smuggling.”

“How right you are,” Kane said. “If my father has anything to say about matters, then all of England will soon be shaken by the throat.”

“Father?” Holmes said. “You think of him as that?”

“In the sense that he created me, not with any emotional feeling. I’ll happily tell you all you want to know about him.”

Holmes brought his knees up to his chin and sucked hard on his pipe. “Then kindly do so,” he said, making a theatrical, beckoning gesture with his hands. “Tell me all you know.”