The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(46)

“Easy, Watson,” Holmes murmured, putting a hand on my shoulder. His hand was steady, but even his stern face looked drawn and stretched, and in he went. Naming myself a fool and a coward inside for my hesitation, I followed.

The smell was even more overpowering in here, and my boots splashed in a shallow pool of foul sludge. The cold was enough to chill my skin, which was usually proof against even a London winter. Even the bare pallet against the wall was cold and waterlogged to the touch. An iron grate on the wall led to a boiler stove, but this, too, was cold to the touch. Traffic sounds came from outside through the window, but distantly.

“Surely this is unworthy of you!” I said, turning on Bradstreet. “No matter what the cause, I cannot believe you would put even a hardened criminal, let alone that poor woman, into such a dank and terrible place! No one could stay here very long without catching their death of cold.”

“I give you my word,” Bradstreet said in an outraged voice, “that this was not how I left her. You may inspect the other cells yourself and see that they are all dry and warm. Only here have the boiler pipes failed, and it was not this way when I left them. I am at a total loss to explain it.”

“Look at this,” Holmes said, drawing us over to the barred window, a narrow slit in the stone, too narrow for a full-grown person to fit through. Five of the six heavyweight iron bars had been torn out, seemingly by brute force. Even the stone around it was broken in places to so much rubble.

Holmes knelt, heedless of the water soaking into his trousers, to make as detailed an inspection as possible. The window was very high up in the wall, and all the furniture bolted into the stone, so that he could not reach the window. I allowed Holmes to climb on my shoulders so that he might get a closer look, but he was down again in an instant.

“I can make out no tracks,” he said, “on account of the water. I should like to examine this place again after the water has been drained, though it may be that the water will leave none.”

“Holmes,” I said. “The odour is much more powerful, but it is the same as the stink of the man at the hotel.”

“I thought it might be,” he said. “For now, I should like to see the window from the other side. There is nothing further I can learn here.”

This required us to go outside the prison and climb down from the street level to an aqueduct, flooded from the constant rain, that ran parallel to the street.

Holmes waved Bradstreet over in order to have better light from the lantern. “The bars have been torn out from the outside,” Holmes said, “and not forced from the inside, which is hardly surprising considering the inaccessibility from inside.” He ran his finger along the jagged patches of wet, broken stone, then dredged one of the discarded bars out of the channel of water. It was bent nearly in half.

Next he walked over to the window of the next cell, put his grip on one of the bars, and pulled, to no effect. Bradstreet and Gregson were debating the likelihood of someone attacking the bars without an inspector or constable hearing them, and were far too busy to overhear us.

“The bars are quite solid, Watson,” Holmes murmured. “Put your hand to one of these and see if you don’t agree.”

I knelt down next to him and took a firm grip, exerting my full strength. Nothing. I took a deep breath, and after a concerted effort, thought I felt a shift in the mortar.

Holmes’s sharp eye had picked out my slight success. “That’s enough,” he said quietly, “or we shall raise some questions best left unasked. If you wanted to free someone in this cell and were outside, could you do it?”

“I believe so,” I said, “but it would take some time. Perhaps hours.”

“And still you could not tear it so completely, as these other bars have been. This isn’t just a loosening of the mortar here, but rather a savage destruction of the stonework all around. This, too, is where the water has come from, for they’ve broken through into this aqueduct.”

“Certainly more damage than I could do.”

“This smell,” he said, “that reminds you of your adversary from the Excelsior Hotel. Does it not also remind you of Carson’s story?”

“It certainly does.”

“And the scent outside the window of the H?tel du Chateau Blanc, next to the drowned man?”

“I’d forgotten that,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Yes, it is the same.”

“I think,” Holmes said, standing up and speaking loud enough to interrupt the two arguing policemen, “that it is time to issue a warrant in order to search the Bountiful Harvest.”





Chapter 09





THE BOUNTIFUL HARVEST





Holmes and I took a cab to Blackfriars Bridge alone, as Gregson would not be able to apply for a warrant until morning. The rain had broken for the first time in days, to be replaced by an equally dense, enshrouding fog.

“We cannot afford a delay,” Holmes said, “or we will find the pigeon flown.”

I hesitated. Any actions we took tonight would be without the benefit of the law behind us. “You think them responsible for Lucja Nowak’s jail break?”

“Well,” Holmes said, “they have pursued her across the Atlantic, and trailed her to two locations here in London. Having tracked her unerringly so far, who else should we look to first?”