Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

This much, Sherlock Holmes already knew.

“And the last?” he prompted.

“Just this morning. Hasn’t even made the papers yet. Kyle Monoghan from Boston, Mass.”

“And he had won at?”

“Blackjack. According to the witnesses, it was a pretty amazing run of luck.”

“Do you have a picture of the fellow?” Holmes enquired calmly.

Capaldi was aware of the detective’s reputation, and had come prepared. He took a glossy photo from the inside pocket of his coat and handed it over, then watched with quiet awe as Holmes studied the thing. It had been taken at the crime scene, Monoghan sprawled out in the desert dirt.

One of Holmes’ narrow eyebrows lifted just a touch, but that was all.

“Let me make sure that I have got this straight. Nothing whatsoever connects the victims, not in terms of gender, age, hometown, occupation, or ethnicity. They were not even kidnapped from the same casino. The single thing that does connect them is that Lady Luck smiled on them beneficently shortly before they met their fate.”

“That’s right.”

“And were their winnings taken?”

The lieutenant nodded. “Every time.”

“Which would mark these cases as a simple string of murder-robberies. Except that…”

Each of the victims had been stripped practically naked and drained completely of their blood, by means of punctures at the throat and wrists. They’d already established that.

“My guys are calling them ‘The Vampire Killings,’” Capaldi let slip.

“There are no such creatures,” Holmes assured him. “Reports that have tried to pit me against Mr. Stoker’s Transylvanian Count are much exaggerated.”

He paused for a few moments, lost in thought.

“Very well. I shall take the case. But I’ll require a fee.”

“My chief has already okayed it.”

Holmes grunted approvingly before turning his attention from Capaldi to the scene beyond his window. The flashing lights, the dreamlike outlines of the different hotels, the churning throng on the sidewalks below.

“Just out of interest, Mr. Holmes,” he heard Capaldi venture, “what exactly do you think of Vegas?”

“Even by the standards of modern day America…” and the great detective lowered his tone, aware that honesty required being rude, “it is utterly preposterous.”

Holmes weaved through the dense crowds on the Strip. The heat and noise seemed to lash at him like whips. People in this modern age moved so quickly and with such noisy bustle, even when they were taking their leisure. He missed London. He missed his flat over Baker Street. And most of all, he missed Watson, although that final emotion was tinged, as ever, with a faint coloring of guilt. The poor old fellow had finally succumbed to a pulmonary canker. Had voluminous doses of secondary pipe-smoke been the cause of that?

It was the worst thing about immortality, seeing those that you’d been close to disappear behind you on the river of implacable time. Lestrade himself. Mrs. Hudson. Even those urchins called the Baker Street Irregulars had grown up, then greyed and met their final hour before his very eyes. Perhaps that was why he had left England. He kept constantly on the move these days, as if he were trying to avoid growing attached too much to anything. Currently, he was travelling the length and breadth of the United States. But after those were done with, where might he wind up?

There was no point, he told himself, either in being maudlin or in wondering too deeply what the future might hold. His longevity was a fact that he had little choice but to accept. Focussing his thoughts on something that could not be changed was an absurd waste of his talents. It was better to stay in the realms of the possible and direct his mind to more constructive ends.

Like solving this terrible case, for instance. That would keep him busy for a while.

Holmes was in disguise, realizing his normal garb would draw too much attention to himself. He needed to blend in, so he had on a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, canvas shoes, a beige baseball cap and a pair of chinos. It was the best compromise that he could manage. He would rather die a hundred deaths than resort to jeans or shorts.

He had come here for two reasons only: First, to see the place with his own eyes, and secondly, to visit Star Trek: the Experience. He had become a devotee of the original show and its movie spin-offs, since he felt a great affinity with the character called Mr. Spock.

He’d intended to spend two or three days here at the very most. Then the murders had begun — he had immediately suspected his assistance might be called upon. In fact, he had already been making some enquiries of his own.

Most of the people around him were tourists, here for the shows, the restaurants and bars, the dolphins and white tigers and only a little flutter on the side. They interested him not a jot. At the heart of this case lay gambling in the serious sense and the caprices of fortune; he was utterly certain of it. That commodity could be found in any place here, any time of day and night. This was a town where the game was constantly afoot.

He headed for the Paris, the setting of Kyle Monoghan’s triumph and the last place that he had been seen. There was one thing Holmes was convinced of, whoever was behind this, there were more than one of them. Harriet Ellison could have been abducted by a single individual, and Daniel Besset had been elderly and slightly built, but Monoghan and Lawrence Mark were both robust and burly. No drugs had been found in the toxicology, so there were at least two murderers involved.

He went through the lobby and into the labyrinthine depths of the casino, his attention gliding watchfully from side to side. Nothing that he saw surprised him after more than a week in this place. Lights flashed everywhere, and there were constant, repetitive clangs and hums and clatters. But that summed up this ultra-modern age, now didn’t it? For all of the advances that mankind had made, most of it wound up as pointless sound and fury.

The majority of the visitors in here were, as out on the sidewalk, merely tourists. They were gambling, but only with a sense of merriment. These were the kind of folk who set a fifty dollar limit, or smaller, for the entire evening. The kind who gambled at all merely because they could not do the same back home.

Scattered among them were other individuals whose presence Holmes found considerably more ominous. Older women wearing gloves, so that they’d not callous their fingers with their constant tugging at the one-armed bandits. Pale, intense men hunched as though in prayer over the blackjack tables. People standing near the roulette wheels with starved-looking gleams in their dull, tired eyes. There was nothing merry about these sorts. Gambling fever had them in its grip as tightly — nay, savagely — as any opiate. They had become slaves to the habit, and poorly treated slaves, at that.

Mostly, they were cheaply dressed. There was evidence that they had pawned watches and rings in some cases — all it needed was a swift glance at their lower finger joints and wrists. But it was their expressions that struck most at the great detective. Hope would flare up as the card was dealt, the wheel set spinning, but it would give way, almost invariably, to horrible disappointment, made all the more profound by the fact that it was a familiar sensation.

He headed for the bar area, glad to leave the poor wretches behind. It was not a busy hour of the day, and there was just one man working behind the counter.

“What’s your poison, buddy?”

Holmes ordered a pina colada, a drink for which he had acquired a taste. They’d not had much in the way of pineapples in Victorian London, and he relished the flavour.

“That unfortunate fellow they found this morning. He was in here yesterday, wasn’t he?”

“You bet,” the barman frowned. “Had an incredible run at the tables.”

“Did he celebrate here afterwards?”

“Where else would he go?”

“And he attracted a big crowd?”

The barman grinned sardonically. “Pal, when you’re on a winning streak in Vegas, hell, you’ve always got a load of friends. The dames especially … that is, till your luck runs out.”

“Does anyone in particular linger in your memory?”

The man thought about it. “There was this chick dressed in black. Chinese or Japanese or something. She