The Classified Dossier: Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula(50)
I hesitated during the telling of my confrontation with the fish-frog creatures, but finally told my entire story as quickly as possible.
Holmes shook his head when I told of flinging the tiara into the water, but held his comments until my conclusion.
“I really cannot congratulate you, Watson,” Holmes said when I was finished. “You had only circumstantial evidence to believe that I was in their power, and no clear certainty that once your single leverage point was lost, that they should feel any compunction to honour your implied arrangement.”
I stiffened with this rebuke. I felt this to be cold and callous treatment in the face of all that I had undergone for his sake.
“You are here, are you not?” I said.
“Well, that is hardly proof of anything,” he said.
“Then how did you escape?”
“My recovery from the depths was never necessary, for the simple reason that I was never in them.”
My irritation dissolved quickly, so eager was I to hear what had transpired after I had left.
“I knew the situation,” he said. “I positioned myself in such a way that I should hear if they raised anchor and at the same time be able to protect myself with my revolver. It was a grim time, to be the one lone sentinel on a ship filled with murderous cultists. I consider my nerves fairly proof against shock, Watson, but it shall take me some weeks to shake the disconcerting vision of their combined unwavering gaze.
“A short time after your departure, Eliot issued orders to the crew in a harsh, guttural language that I have never heard before. Some of the noises he made were almost croaks or bleats, if you can credit it. I expected them to try for the anchor, but instead men were sent into the hold. A few minutes later the motion of the ship changed, and I realized that Eliot had somehow managed to free the ship from the anchor and moorings without using the capstan, and we were now adrift.
“You may not understand how unsettling this was, Watson, but consider the size and weight of your average ship’s anchor. It typically takes four men to raise it using the capstan’s mechanical apparatus, which is quite loud, and even then it is considered no easy task. Yet only by bringing up the anchor from below could someone affect the ship’s release. Though we were close to the riverbank, I’d spent some time studying the area before, and the area underneath is both surprisingly deep and covered with a thick mud like a mire.
“You see? This was a shocking corroboration of Carson’s fantastic story. Inhuman assistance from the depths, right here in English waters. This, too, accounts for the ports in the bottom of the ship, as these would allow swimmers to leave the ship unseen. The logic is sound, and inescapable. Your singular encounter further corroborates their existence.
“The storm fell even more fully upon us then, and while I am not quite so ready to attribute supernatural causes to its behaviour as you seem to be, my dear Watson, it certainly had the effect of sending the Innsmouth crew into a frightful whirlwind of activity. They were instantly caught up in the business of preventing the ship from being torn to pieces by the sudden gale. At any rate, so frantic was their plight that I was unattended to, and was able to make my way below decks in search of the missing Nowak sisters.
“Finding the cabin in which they were imprisoned required no great skill, for I’d noticed a woman’s handkerchief covering one of the portholes when we boarded, and I found a corresponding door that was barred from the outside. When I forced the door with a broken-off length of spar, I found both of the Nowak sisters inside.
“This next part will pain your tender sensibilities, Watson, but I must impart it, for when I tried to pull both of the sisters from their cabin, Lucja, the eldest sister, refused to allow her own rescue.
“‘Take Elzbieta,’ she urged me, ‘so that she shall never have to grow up in the blight-shadowed town of Innsmouth. But leave me! If you don’t, the Esoteric Order of Dagon shall pursue me with means both foul and implacable, and so overtake us all. The only way I can secure her safety is to remain here. Refuse me, and I shall scream and fight you, making any hope of our escape impossible.’
“I could quite see her seriousness, and believed her to be sincere in her threat. The young girl, for her part, seemed to expect this decision from her sister, and while I cannot help but lament this horrible solution, I can also admire the intellectual calm with which Elzbieta viewed the situation. Most commendable.”
Holmes had created enough smoke with his pipe that I was obliged to open a window to relieve the poisonous atmosphere that had gathered during his tale.
“The rest is unremarkable,” he went on. “Shouts came from the forward hatch by which I’d made my way down, so I made my way aft and up onto the deck by an alternate route, Elzbieta in tow.
“The Innsmouth sailors tried to prevent me, and I was forced to shoot two of them and throw another man overboard, before I managed to release the launch and lower myself and the girl into it.”
“That poor, noble woman,” I said. “To suffer herself such a fate at the hands of those beasts. Anyone unfortunate enough to dwell in such a town as this Innsmouth must be at the complete mercy of this omnipotent Dagon and his people.”
“Tut, tut, Watson,” Holmes said. “Surely there are enough mysteries of man and beast without bringing the occult into it.”
“But, Holmes, I saw them!”