Our progress was somewhat ponderous. The cab man—for no reason I could discern—kept trying to turn left. And though the horse would get his head pulled back halfway to his shoulder, he resolutely continued to trudge forward, occasionally giving little neighs of protest as if to say, “But… Upper Swandham! That’s this way!”
The cab man swore and cursed. Well… and drank. Whenever he wasn’t fighting with his horse, he took constant nips from his flask, which—he assured me—were only meant to ward off the (nonexistent) cold. Yet through all this, the erstwhile steed continued to advance towards East London.
For my part, I was only glad someone competent was in charge.
By the time we reached Upper Swandam Lane, the man had fallen silent. Spotting a dirty little sign that read “The Bar of Gold” I cried, “Just here, driver.”
The man made no response.
“Just here, please,” I said. But as this produced no result, I decided to try, “Woah!”
The horse stopped.
Clambering down from the cab, I went to the front and asked, “What do I owe you?”
Again, there was no response. With a sigh, I reached into my waistcoat pocket and began producing coins. “Here is what I think I owe you,” I told him. “Now, will you wait for me? My business will not take long and I do not like to be on such a street at such an hour with no transport.”
As he refused to answer, I turned to the horse.
“Will you wait for me?”
He gave me a reassuring sort of snort. That was the best I was going to get, it seemed. I turned away to find The Bar of Gold. Despite the sign, it wasn’t easy. There was no door, you see. There was this irregular sort of crack between two buildings, as if they had once stood straight, but had fallen in against each other. At last, lost for better options, I made my way into that crevice. By God, it reeked! I found it paved not only with human excrement, but more than a few execrable humans. Some lay in the shadows begging, some mumbling incoherent ramblings and one—I will swear—decomposing.
A dozen feet in, I found the actual door to The Bar of Gold, swung it open, and entered into a filthy den of vice. The air was filled with thick brown opium smoke. The only light came from a few oil lamps, flickering sickly in the gloom. Dozens of men lay in terraced wooden berths, their bodies flung into fantastic poses. Most held pipes in languorous hands, or pressed between their lips. A few seemed to be sleeping—though the distinction between that state and wakefulness might be a bit hazy at the moment. The air was filled with heavy breathing and muttering.
It was my first opium den.
And I could already tell something was wrong.
Deeply wrong.
For one thing, all the stupefied men drew their ragged breaths in perfect unison. From a medical standpoint, I understood why they should gasp and wheeze.
But not why they should synchronize.
And if one’s powers of observation were not equal to discerning such a subtle cue, there was a more obvious one. Their mutterings. Apropos of nothing, every single drug-blasted sufferer suddenly decided to mention:
The Spider returns to the empty web.
His body has left him.
An empty spider for an empty web.
He shall live forever.
The rest shall perish, all.
Beware the Spider who cannot bite!
Moriarty! Moriarty!
My jaw dropped open in dread at this unexpected but familiar name.
At the back of the room, an old Chinese man with both his eyes plucked out scratched furiously at a leather-bound book with a battered quill. He was smiling, I recall. The loss of his eyes seemed to bother him little, though it must have been recent, judging by the two trails of scabbed blood that ran down his face and onto his threadbare robe. He made sure he had every word scrawled down into that journal of his. He never missed when he dipped his quill.
A short-haired serving boy bustled by me with balls of opium on a long plank made of fired clay. And do you know, none of the men around me paid him the least attention. He went to a strange metal contraption in one of the walls. At first I thought it was an oven or at least the door to one. Yet when he swung it open, it led not into a fire but out into the alley behind us. The instant he opened it, a feeling of deep discomfort overtook me.
Was there…?
Was there a light in the alley?
If so, it was of no color I could name.
I had seen such a thing once before: when I beheld my first demon on my second adventure with Holmes. The thing that had so nearly killed me had been of no color either. I could spy it only as areas where my limited, mortal perception failed.
I was sure there was such an area in the alley by The Bar of Gold.
The boy dipped his plank of opium out through the strange metal door into the unlight beyond. I saw his head bobbing rhythmically, as he slowly counted to twenty. Having reached that number, he withdrew the plank, closed the metal door, and turned back to the room. Now the men on their wooden beds took note. They reached towards him, howling and whining. Now they found their separate voices and used them to beg, to cajole, to insist that it was their turn—that the man beside him had gotten some of the last batch and they had not.
The boy rolled his eyes at them. He knew who was due and who was not. Silently, he shuffled down the aisle towards me, handing balls of sticky tar to every happy fellow whose turn had come. These they pushed into their long pipes with trembling hands. Matches flared. Pipe bowls were thrust eagerly to the oil lamps. Parched and puckered lips
