Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 2) by Ralph E. Vaughan

bag of dynamite. Going against supernatural horrors and terrors from beyond the grave was one thing, but carrying explosives was quite another.  He forced a smile.
    “You can count on me, Mr Holmes.”
    “Good man.”
     
    IV
     
    They followed the scavenger Bagby into the Whitechapel murk till they reached a tumbled ruin, dilapidated even for this neglected region of London. The collapse of the veneer revealed brickwork of much more ancient workmanship, easily Elizabethan, perhaps earlier, Sherrington thought as the feeble lights from the shuttered lanterns flashed over it. The antiquarian had little time to consider its elder nature as Bagby led them deeper into the blackness. They adjusted the lanterns’ shutters, exposing a brick-strewn chamber. Quickly, Bagby cleared some carefully arranged debris, exposing the way down into the underworld of London.
    “This way is perishing old, it is,” Bagby said as a weathered set of steps was revealed. “Makes those Romans look like babes, don’t it, and even them blood-drinking Druids newcomers. Follow me close, gents, and follow me, all silent like.”
    Sherrington saw carvings incised into dank walls, effaced by time but still recognizable as gods and glyphs, though it was unclear what hand, or other appendage, could have wrought them in some primal era. He cursed the urgency of their mission, and though he vowed to return at some future time, he doubted it was likely he could rediscover this place on his own, or even that he had much of a future to look forward to.
    The sound of rushing water and the rising stink told him they were approaching an artery of the sewer system, but it was equally clear this way had never been dug by any of London’s nightmen or maintained by flushers. It was an ancient place found by this tosher, a secret way with a wall broken through to where he picked his living from the ebb and flow of the city. As they entered the sewer proper, the miasmic air that rose from the clotted waters assailed the senses, and Sherrington was struck by the incongruity of treading the foetid river’s narrow shore clad in evening clothes and carrying a bag of dynamite. He would have laughed, but it was all he could do to keep from choking. It was no place for a dapper man about town, a scholar of the arcane and occult, but, he reflected, this was a sticky situation of his own making, and hardly the first.
    When they reached a rather small opening in the wall, Bagby the tosher set down a lantern, then hesitated at length, his expression giving every indication of a man at odds. He obviously did not want to venture back into the city’s drainage system, but he had taken a sovereign to do so. Honor or greed, the result was the same.
    He crawled into the murkiness beyond, Holmes following after, handing a lantern through. The Brigadier pushed the box to Holmes, then crawled through the ragged opening with an agility that belied his years. Lastly came Sherrington, dragging the bag of dynamite after him, carefully.
    Like most Londoners, Sherrington had never ventured into the Capitol’s netherworld, indeed had never given it a thought. He had, however, read Hugo’s Les Miserables ,  so an attempt to envision the realm of sewers would result in a high romanticized construction of murmuring waters, shimmering lights, mysterious shadows, walls encrusted with glowing lichen, and chilling breezes. How wrong he had been—the only light was the pathetic beams from their lanterns, which Holmes adjusted to their smallest apertures; there was very little movement of air, and that foetid air made his eyes burn; the water moving by more gurgled and sucked than murmured; and although the brick walls were indeed heavily encrusted they did not glow, nor did he think it was lichen. As for the smell assaulting him, he had no words…not in any language, living or dead.
    Bagby breathed deeply. Indeed, the foul atmosphere seemed to actually revive and invigorate the tosher.
    Setting