Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER THREE

“I was there,” continued Mycroft, “on the night Moreau left our country. I had thoroughly debriefed my agent as to the work Moreau had been conducting. While most of it was, as you say, so removed from practical science as to be evidence of a damaged personality, some was rather more interesting. The work he conducted after, on a small retainer from me, was vitally so.

“The offer I presented was simple. His chances of legitimate practice had been wholly ruined. If he wished to continue in science he would have no choice but to accept the small budget I offered and the direction I wished that research to follow. I wasn’t blind to his wilfulness and, once out of the country, there would be a limit to the level of control I could apply. Nonetheless, I supplied him with company—an assistant cum caretaker, a man I had worked with on a handful of occasions previously and whom I thought entirely trustworthy. Perhaps he was, though I now also know he was a drunk and, as can be the way with sufferers of that particular condition, far too easily led if offered a warm bed and a full bottle.

“They worked on a small island in the South Pacific, away from the attentions of civilisation, with nothing but a twice-yearly trip to replenish supplies. They were perfectly isolated. Nothing but the work I offered and the dangled promise of future vindication should that work bear fruit.”

“And what was that work?” Holmes asked.

“He was attempting to define the biological trigger for evolutionary change chemically, hoping to isolate and replicate it. The hope was that he might develop some serum or another that could improve our resilience; increase our immunity against disease; make us more impervious to extremes of temperature; or able to function for longer periods without food or water. The sort of small improvements that, frankly, might give an army all the advantage it needed in order to be victorious.”

“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is incredible! Did you really think such things were possible?”

“My dear Watson,” Mycroft replied with some irritation, “I considered such things entirely possible given the work Moreau had already completed. I am not one to waste Her Majesty’s money. Sadly, it was not to be. Moreau had other plans.

“One day I simply stopped receiving messages from Montgomery, my agent. I confess my first instinct was to assume a natural disaster had befallen them, a storm perhaps or even an attack by natives. Who was to say what dangers might lurk in so remote a part of the globe? It certainly seemed unlikely that they could survive without my financial assistance.”

“Surely you had some method of checking?” Holmes asked.

“I had one of our ships make a casual investigation when sailing past the island. I could hardly allow the crew to know the reason behind my investigation of course. I allowed an order to pass through navy command asking for the area to be assessed for military use. Included within that order was the need to check for signs of habitation. If Moreau, Montgomery and his native retinue were still alive then I felt sure they would betray the fact somehow, a trace of fire-smoke, fishing paraphernalia on the beach, something must certainly alert the crew. Of course, if they had been found, then my security would likely have been compromised, but I deemed it worth the risk. Uppermost in my mind at all times was the possibility that Moreau had sold his work to another power. Needless to say that is always a risk and one that I would have dealt with to the best of my ability had it arisen. Perhaps it has …”

“You have heard from Moreau?” Holmes asked.

“Nothing so simple,” his brother replied. “But this matter is complicated. Let me continue it in a strict manner.

“In total, Moreau was unheard of for eight years. Then, twelve years ago, the Lady Vain sank in the South Pacific, perhaps you remember?”

Indeed I did. The ship had collided with a derelict vessel only a few days out from Callao and, aside from a crammed longboat—later rescued by a navy vessel—all other passengers were lost. I recounted as much to Mycroft.

“All other passengers bar one,” he replied. “Edward Prendick, a wealthy young man who had taken to the study of natural history, as all wealthy men must take to the study of something unless they wish to lose their minds before they are thirty. He was found eleven months after the loss of the Lady Vain, adrift in that patch of ocean.”

“He survived out there for eleven months?”

“Indeed not, that would have been exactly the sort of feat of endurance I was paying Moreau to accomplish. Prendick claimed to have spent the time between the sinking of the Lady Vain and his later rescue on an island in the company of the disgraced Moreau, the drunk Montgomery and a collection of monstrous creatures, the like of which had him branded delusional before he had even reached port.”

“What sort of creatures?” I asked.

“Hybrids—absurd combinations of man and beast—the results, he claimed, of Moreau’s experiments in vivisection. He insisted that the island had become colonised by them, an entire culture of educated animals, walking upright like men. The creatures had risen up against their creator, with Prendick being the lone survivor.”

I laughed. “And Holmes accuses me of being far-fetched in my ideas,” I replied. “Even I wouldn’t dream of a story so wild.”

Mycroft met my incredulity with stony silence. Eventually he spoke. “Far-fetched or not, Prendick was telling the truth.”

I was quite unable to respond seriously to that. Even Holmes looked startled, staring at his brother through a slowly exhaled mouthful of smoke, perhaps to judge his sincerity. For myself I was in no doubt of that. Mycroft was not a man inclined to lie—though, on reflection, as a secret-service man he must have been perfectly adept at it. When talking to Holmes he was only too aware of the importance of precise facts. If he said a thing was the case, then it was. But how were animal-human hybrids even remotely possible? I couldn’t help but think he must have been mistaken. No doubt Moreau—a man clearly in love with both the scalpel and wild flights of imagination—had constructed a selection of faux creatures, like the monstrosities one hears of in American travelling shows. What had made such an impression on Prendick can have been no more than the absurd “fish-boys” and “bird-ladies” of the freak show. No doubt, to an untrained eye, such things might pass muster. I suggested as much to Mycroft but the large man simply shook his head.

“I can understand your scepticism,” he said. “As you are a man of medical science I would be disappointed should you offer anything else. However, I can prove the veracity of everything, and perhaps it would save time if you were simply to accept my words at face value!”

Which put me in my place.

“It is clear that Moreau felt that the answer to my scientific problem lay in continuing his exploration of vivisection. Perhaps he felt that animal attributes couldn’t be conferred upon humans on a chemical level, they must be grafted on with needle and twine. Either that or he simply couldn’t leave the scalpel alone. I think that’s equally possible.”

“Some people just can’t resist spilling blood,” I agreed. “There is a power in interfering with nature that some broken individuals should not be entitled to wield.”

“Whatever the truth of the matter, science can never move backwards. Once knowledge is acquired it can only grow, not vanish again into ignorance.”

“But, surely, if Moreau died …?”

“I am by no means sure he did. Prendick’s account is unequivocal on the matter. He says the beasts tore their creator apart. He and Montgomery disposed of the body themselves. Montgomery was attacked later and his body—presumed dead at least—was thrown into the sea.”

“‘Presumed dead’?” Holmes asked.

“I’m being as accurate as possible. We must bear in mind that we only have one man’s word to go on for any of it.”

“One man who I presume has stood up to rigorous debriefing,” I commented.

“Not that rigorous,” Holmes added. I looked at him and he qualified his statement with a brief smile. “He hasn’t talked to me.”

“Nor is he likely to,” Mycroft said. “Edward Prendick is dead. Bear in mind this all happened eleven years ago. Finding the hustle and bustle of town too much for nerves frayed by his experiences, he repaired to the countryside. He devoted himself to chemistry and reading, living the life of a hermit. Which is why it was a couple of days before his body was found.” Mycroft drained what was left of his coffee and perched the cup and saucer on the arm of his chair. “Evidence points towards his having committed suicide. Certainly that was the decision made by the courts.”

“You doubt it?” Holmes asked.

“Only because I cannot imagine a skilled chemist committing suicide by drinking acid. There are less painful ways to achieve oblivion.”

“It would seem unnecessarily agonising,” I agreed. “Surely a narcotic would be likelier. Were the remains so corrupt that positive identification was impossible?”

“He was not in a fine state, naturally, but the police were satisfied as to his identity. He was recognised by the postmaster, the man who it would seem knew him best as he regularly had to collect parcels of scientific equipment.”

“So,” Holmes said, “we have three people who might possess the knowledge to replicate these experiments in vivisection. All of them are, on the surface at least, dead. The fact that you refuse to accept that means these experiments are continuing—correct?”

“I have my suspicions,” his brother agreed. “You will have been following, no doubt, the news coverage of the Rotherhithe deaths?”

“Several bodies found in or near the river,” Holmes said. “Police reports stated that they were the result of gang violence.”

“Well they would, wouldn’t they?” Mycroft replied. “Nothing keeps the inquisitive nature of a populace down more than mention of gang violence.”

“It certainly bored Holmes at the time,” I admitted. “I tried to interest him in it but he refused to listen.”

“I don’t believe you ever mentioned it.”

This angered me. I was forever reading Holmes news reports in the hope of sparking his curiosity.

“I read out half the paper!” I insisted.

He shrugged. “If my memory serves, and it usually does, there was not one single crime I could have investigated.”

I wasn’t having that, and wracked my brain for that day’s top recommendations: “There were several burglaries; the assassination of Charles DuFries; that greyhound trainer, Barry Forshaw, vanished mid-race; the Highgate poisonings, the robbery on the 12.05 to Leamington and the kidnap of a Parisian furrier,” I said.

He dismissed the lot with the flick of his hand.

“Trifles!” he shouted. “Missing persons and pilferers!”

I looked to Mycroft. “For someone who complains of boredom so easily you have no idea how difficult it is to get him to engage in an actual case. On that particular day he threw the paper in the fire and got on with cataloguing his collection of dog hair.”

“Dog hair?” Mycroft raised an eyebrow.

“How else can one expect to recognise a breed by only a few strands?” Holmes replied.

Mycroft allowed that thought to hover in the air for a moment before continuing with his story. “If we can return to Rotherhithe? The bodies were in fact the result of animal attacks.”

“Ah,” I replied. “I think I can see where this might fit in.”

“Indeed, the pathology reports make it clear that the wounds are not the result of any one animal they can pin their reputations on.”

“And we discount the logical answer,” Holmes said. “That they were killed by multiple creatures. Why?”

“Because one would tend to think that if there really were a shark in the Thames we would have heard reports of one by now.”

“One of the creatures was a shark?”

“The latest cadaver had had its left leg bitten off by a blacktip shark, a species most commonly found off the coast of Australia.”

“Absurd!” I exclaimed.

“Fascinating,” Holmes announced, turning to look at me. “A few weeks ago you were willing to believe in the existence of demons and the efficacy of magic. Now, when presented with science— albeit of a peculiar and hitherto unheard of variety—you blanch at the thought. It says a great deal about you.”

“In the matter of The Breath of God I simply chose to accept the evidence of my own senses,” I countered.

“A cardinal error,” Holmes replied. “Unless aggressively trained, senses can be easily cheated.”

“So you believe all this madness about monsters abroad in the streets of Rotherhithe?”

“I neither believe nor disbelieve it.” He nodded towards Mycroft. “Much like my brother I am sure. I would not believe a thing until I absolutely knew it to be the case. However, we must accept that the widest reaches of scientific possibility may well turn out to be proven correct. Science is a fluid thing, Doctor. Like mercury spilled on the laboratory table, it chases away with itself. Often it is quite beyond us to restrain or capture it.”

“I am aware of the nature of science, Holmes,” I replied with irritation. “I have spent a number of years studying it after all.”

“Indeed,” Holmes said, offering a placating smile. “And you have considerable talent in your field.”

“In my field.” I smiled, unable to resist dwelling on his caveat. “Indeed.”

“I make no firm conclusions,” Mycroft said. “I simply present everything I know to be relevant, and trust in your skills -” he looked at me “- both of your skills—to help get to the bottom of things. I want you to investigate the deaths, eradicate—or confirm —alternative explanations, and act on them.”

“Act on them?” asked Holmes.

“If Dr Moreau is alive and well and working in the capital, I want him found.”

I laughed. “From everything you’ve said, one would think you were more in need of game hunters than a detective.”

“I have them too,” Mycroft replied. “This is too important a matter to entrust to only two men.”

Holmes scoffed at that and kicked at the leg of his chair with his heel. He was not a man who relished the idea of working as part of a team.

“I know how much you enjoy working with others, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “But you will simply have to accept that this is a wide-reaching matter and I have set all of my best men on it.”

“‘All’?” Holmes positively shouted this. “How many is ‘all’?”

“You need not be in each others’ pockets throughout the investigation but as well as an expert in hunting and tracking I have instigated a little … Well, let us call it a science club. I have charged the best brains in the country to look to the matter and offer their input. Who knows whether we will need biological assistance, or medical, or simply someone to approach the scientific aspects of the case in a more lateral manner? You’ll meet them later this evening. I’ve told them to expect you.”

“At the clubhouse?” I asked with a smile.

Mycroft chuckled. “Indeed, the most perfect place you could imagine for such a club. They are in residence at The British Museum.”