Mystery and death swirl around two beautiful young women who come into the lives of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson of No. 221 B, Baker Street. One mysteriously disappears, the other becomes embroiled in a baffling case of stolen documents, shadowy figures and an esoteric society, the Nine Unknown Men, bent on securing the secrets of Life and Death from naturalist and friend to Sherlock Holmes, Charles Darwin. A crusty sailor dies at the very doorstep of the great detective, a scroll of indecipherable scribbles pinned in his frozen hand. Its arcane message points Holmes and Watson first to the volcano-rimmed shores of Sumatra, then to underground sewers beneath London, lair of Holmes’ new nemesis, Lofcadio Hearseborne III—arch villain, arch racist, bent on the destruction of “undesirables”—and site of Victorian London’s greatest terror.