Black Cat Weekly #76

Chapter 5-5

“I concur,” said Gibberne, nodding.

“Hmmm.” Mycroft scowled. “I don’t know.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Have you a better idea?”

Ultimately, Mycroft had to give in. Yet another “news” item was leaked to the prominent newspapers, and a day set for the move. On that day, all Gibberne’s lab equipment was packed in crates and safes, each one of which was wrapped in chains and stout ropes.

“She’ll have a time getting through that lot,” Mycroft observed as the items were loaded into wagons, one per wagon to make it even more difficult for Miss Adler to plunder them. In addition, armed guards were assigned to each wagon.

that“We can’t stop her from snooping around at high speed,” Sherlock observed, “but all the locks and safeguards will slow her down no matter how quickly she moves. And of course, there is no serum for her to steal in any event. I will inject myself with Mr. Gibberne’s accelerator potion at the first hint of piracy.”

“I still don’t like it,” Mycroft said.

“I will allow the scheme perhaps lacks a certain elegance,” Sherlock said. “In the absence of an optional one, though, we shall have to go with this.” He turned to Gibberne. “My question to you now is, should I be dosed when the caravan sets out?”

“If you do, you will experience it as a slow-moving journey,” Gibberne said with a touch of humor. “The hour it will take to get from my home to the farmhouse in Shepherd’s Bush will seem to you to last the better part of a day. You will suffer excruciating boredom—and the effects will likely wear off before Miss Adler commences her attack. You will be better off waiting until there is some warning of her approach. The serum will take effect in less than thirty seconds. It will take her at least that long to break open the one or two of the strongboxes—if indeed she can manage the thing at all. Once you have matched her velocity, you should be able to stop her.”

Sherlock frowned. “The serum conveys no excessive strength?”

“No—merely speed.”

“Hmm. Then the two men that tore open the bank vault can’t have been using your concoction.”

“No. But I can tell you that Professor Redwood, one of my, uh, former associates, was working on nutritional supplements designed to promote growth and healing. Added muscular efficiency and power could be side-effects of such. Perhaps his experiments have reached the human-trial phase.”

“Perhaps. Well, that’s neither here nor there. Let us prepare for our confrontation with the speedy Miss Maureen Adler.”

On the day of the move, Sherlock was ready. He had as a weapon a cane, but as a skilled stick-fighter and swordsman, he was very able with it.

He noticed Gibberne scanning their surroundings as the horse-drawn wagon trundled along. Loaded in the back of the wagon was a safe and three boxes, all shrouded in heavy chains. Sherlock and Gibberne sat among them. They had reasoned that Adler would be lying in wait at some point along the route to Shepherd’s Bush, examining each passing wagon for hints that the serum was aboard.

“We won’t see her, you know,” he said to the researcher.

“Oh, I realize that. I can’t help myself.” Gibberne paused. “Do you suppose she’ll think it suspicious that I am trying to spot her?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I fancy she’ll think it’s perfectly normal. Doubtless she’ll be amused, knowing that she can zip in before we’re scarcely aware of it. Besides, she won’t really know what you’re doing, will she—because you will be moving much more slowly, to her, that she is unlikely to notice that you indeed are looking around for her.”

areHe was lounging at ease, facing back in the direction from which they’d come. It was a warm, sunny day, and he found himself drowsing a little. Gibberne had fallen silent, his brows knit in thought.

Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment. Feeling himself drifting off, he opened them again—and thought he saw a mirage-like disturbance in the distance, far behind them. It rapidly drew nearer.

Without saying anything, he quickly reached for the padded case containing a hypodermic loaded with the last few milligrams of Gibberne’s accelerator and injected himself with it. The queer disturbance was alongside the wagon before he finished pushing down the plunger. He said, “Gibberne! I think we’re—” And then he felt a wave of dizziness and euphoria flood over him. There was something wonderful and seductive about the blissful feeling. It reminded him of the one time he had experienced the effects of cocaine, not long before.

Sherlock forced his attention away from those thoughts as the “disturbance” began to come into focus. After a moment he saw a young woman dressed in close-fitting clothing with goggles over her eyes climbing into the bed of the wagon—which, he realized, had slowed its forward motion to the point of being all but immobile.

She stalked past him without giving him a glance. She set about trying to free one of the crates from its chains, as he could tell by listening to her movements. He was tempted to cast a glance over his shoulder, cautiously so that Adler would not suspect he was moving as quickly as she. He moved his head slightly, slowly, so as not to attract her attention. She tugged on the chains binding one of the crates, swearing luridly. The horse seemed frozen in place. The wagon’s wheels were as motionless, moving as slowly as the minute hand on a clock.

He enjoyed the moment: Adler stymied by the ropes and chains, all else dream-like. He could have let her continue struggling, but what would be the point? He wasn’t sure he could sit still that long, and in any case, he wanted to best her.

He stood up. She whirled around, clearly stunned. Her hands, he saw, were trembling, and despite the goggles her eyes were deeply sunk in their sockets. She looked gaunt. Brandishing his cane, he said, “Miss Adler. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now you will please surrender yourself to me.”

She let out an incredulous laugh. “You’re joking, boy.”

The “boy” stung, but he refused to show it. “By no means,” he said. “You are tampering with government property. And you cannot win past me.”

He saw her eyes narrow behind her goggles. She knows I’m right, he thought. She knows I am moving as quickly as she.

She knows I’m right,She knows I am moving as quickly as she.She bared her teeth at him in a silent snarl. Abruptly she feinted to her left—but he was ready, and thrust his cane between her legs, causing her to stumble. She righted herself instantly, again cursing horribly—language he hadn’t even heard from sailors. He squared off against her—but she reached into her leather jacket and yanked out a pistol.

Sherlock gasped as she raised the weapon at him and fired. He winced, expecting a blow—but the bullet never hit him.

She missed! She was apparently as startled as he. Her hand holding the g*n drooped; then, enraged, she lifted it and fired again—and again he wasn’t hit.

She missed! againBoth he and Adler stared at each other, he in astonishment and she in fury. Then she threw the g*n at him, but he ducked it and sprang forward, seizing her.

To his surprise, she was stronger than he had expected, perhaps because she was fueled by desperation. They grappled, each unable to win an advantage. Then, to his annoyance, his dose of the accelerator potion wore off. Sherlock found himself at normal speed, struggling to hold onto a flailing ghost that emitted high-pitched screams like the whining of a mosquito. Sherlock yelled for help, and Gibberne, staring in astonishment at Sherlock’s sudden materialization, came to his aid, wrapping the shrieking apparition in a chain. It was already moving more slowly.

“Dose—wearing off,” Gibberne gasped as the decelerating young woman pummeled him.

They managed to maintain their grip on Adler despite her high-speed kicking and punching, which became slower and slower with each passing split-second. Within moments her metabolism had slowed down to the point where she appeared in normal time, disheveled and panting with anger. Despite her youth, some of her hair was shot through with gray.

Sherlock tore her goggles off. Without them she was hollow-eyed and had the appearance of a d**g addict. Her hands trembled more noticeably. She was, all in all, a piteous sight.

They bound her more securely, ignoring her curses and threats. Eventually, though, they had to tie a strip of cloth around her head to gag her.

“What in the world is wrong with her?” Sherlock wondered aloud.

“I fear that it is partly my fault,” Gibberne said, shamefacedly. “I believe that more testing will show that this version of my serum has addictive qualities that only become obvious after a few doses.” When Sherlock’s eyes went wide, Gibberne hastened to reassure him. “You used it only once, and exhibit none of the signs,” he said. “We will have you examined by a physician, but I’m confident that no damage has been done. This poor girl, however…” He shook his head. “She has used it three or four times by now, and apparently that is enough to establish a craving for it. She’s experiencing symptoms like those someone addicted to drink feels when being weaned from alcohol; delirium tremens, the DTs. The d**g will eventually be flushed by her body’s natural processes, and she will recover. Until then…” He shrugged. “I shall have to do more work to eliminate or at least reduce the d**g’s addictive qualities.”

“She is paying adequately for her crimes, poor thing,” Sherlock said, regarding Maureen Adler with sympathy.

Sherlock and Mycroft, lounging in comfortable armchairs in the Stranger’s Room at the Diogenes Club, sat discussing Maureen Adler’s singular case. The young woman had confessed her culpability and was delivered to the intelligence service.

Sherlock recounted his exploits, including the peculiar fact of Adler firing twice at Sherlock at close range and missing him both times.

“I cannot account for it,” Sherlock said.

“Nor can I,” said his brother. “It is an interesting problem! One would think that moving as fast as you were at that point, many times more rapidly than normal human movement, the effects of a bullet fired from a g*n that is also moving far more quickly than normal would be even more devastating. If we—”

“Mycroft! That’s it!” Sherlock slapped the arm of his chair.

“Eh? What is? I don’t follow.”

Sherlock barked out a laugh. “Friction!” he said. “As you so correctly point out, Miss Adler and I were moving many times faster than usual, and anything we carried likewise was accelerated. Now consider: You said that firing a bullet at that speed meant it was subject to our velocity plus its own. Yet the surrounding medium—the very air itself—was not speeded up. It therefore retained its normal resistance to objects passing through it. Perhaps the friction of the very air on the bullet was sufficient to melt it.”

plus its ownMycroft opened his mouth to reply, then shut it as he considered what Sherlock said. His face twisted as he struggled with the idea. He lifted a hand, and the footman standing by the door, always alert to the requirements of the club’s members, came forward. Mycroft requested pen and paper. The footman went to fetch it.

“What is it?” Sherlock asked.

“Wait,” Mycroft replied. “I must do some figuring.”

When he returned, Mycroft seized the writing materials. He scribbled intensely for some minutes while Sherlock watched, fascinated. At last Mycroft looked up from his computations. “It won’t work,” he said.

“Eh?”

“Your idea about the friction of the air acting on the bullet. It won’t work.”

Curious, Sherlock leaned over the papers. “Why not?”

“Look here. You and Adler were in the back of the wagon, with only a few feet between you. Yes? Now, consider: if the bullet is moving fast enough to heat from air friction, it only has a very tiny fraction of a second to do so…and, considering the distance, that’s not long enough.”

Sherlock stared at the formulae his brother had written. “Hmm. This seems right. But then—I was not hit. And she tried to shoot me twice. Something made her fail.”

twice“Yes, and I am not sure what that could be…” Suddenly Mycroft snapped his fingers. “I believe I know!” He grabbed the paper and made quick drawing. It depicted two stick figures. The one on the left he labeled SH, and the one on the right he labeled MA. “That’s Maureen Adler,” he said, pointing at it. You see I have drawn her with the g*n in her hand, but not yet aimed at me.” He added another hand to the Adler figure, this one pointed at the SH stick figure. “Here she lifts her hand, as she fires. When she does this, she imparts upward inertia to the bullet as it leaves the barrel of the pistol. Remember, you and she and the g*n are all moving at many times normal speed. As she raises her arm and fires, then, the bullet inside the g*n is also moving upwards at a vastly increased speed. My hypothesis is that enough of that upward inertia is preserved as the bullet leaves the g*n that, instead of traveling straight towards me, its path curves upward, and the bullet zooms over your head. The hand droops—then she raises it again and fires, with the exact same result. Had she been composed enough to have aimed directly at me, the bullets would have found their target.”

upward inertiaSherlock nodded slowly. “I believe you’ve hit on the answer,” he said. “I can see no other way for it to have happened. Unless…” Sherlock paused as he recalled her shaky appearance once she had slowed to a more normal human speed. He said, “No, Mycroft, I think we are both wrong. We have constructed elaborate scenarios to account for her failure to shoot me at close range. There is a simpler and better explanation.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“Gibberne’s formula has the effect of speeding up one’s metabolism, correct? Now, because the stuff increased her metabolic rate, the effects of her addiction hit her more rapidly and strongly. She appeared aged before her time and had the aspect of one long sunk in the a***e of drugs. I therefore think the true answer is a simple one: she couldn’t aim properly because her hands were so shaky.”

Mycroft pursed his lips as he pondered this. “You are very possibly right.”

Sherlock stroked his chin. “Had she been able to take one more shot at me,” he said, “I might not be sitting here. I was incredibly lucky.” At the back of his mind was relief that Gibberne’s d**g had not proved addictive to him after only one use. I certainly wouldn’t risk trying it again, he said to himself, even if he does manage to make more.

I certainly wouldn’t risk trying it again,even if he does manage to make more.Cocaine, on the other hand…

A.L. Sirois is a writer, ghostwriter, developmental editor, graphic artist & jazz drummer. In June 2024, Murder in Mennefer, the first volume of an MG series set in ancient Egypt, will be published by Regal House. He lives in Rockingham County, North Carolina with his wife and occasional collaborator, novelist Grace Marcus.

Murder in Mennefer