The Secret Fiend tbsh-4 Page 13

  Is this the REAL Jack? Can it be Crew? thinks Sherlock. Fear surges through his veins. He feels sick to his stomach. Were it to attack him now, he wouldn’t be able to move. But it jumps from the tracks onto a nearby building, a long dangerous leap of nearly ten feet, and vanishes into the night.

  For a few moments there is silence.

  “What, in the name of God, was that?” Lestrade’s voice is quavering.

  “I don’t know. But it came from direction of the hatter’s shop.”

  A HARROWING ATTACK

  They fly toward the shop, but it seems as if they are too late. A little crowd is gathered up a lane just past the hatter’s door. They are looking down at someone, crumpled on the cobblestones. It is a girl. Sherlock recognizes Beatrice’s red bonnet lying nearby.

  He beats Lestrade to the spot and bursts through the little group, pushing people aside. “Beatrice!”

  She lifts her head. Sherlock sighs in relief and Lestrade comes forward. But her face looks ashen, tears roll down her cheeks, and an angry welt is evident on her forehead. Holmes leans over her. The instant he does, she puts her arm around his shoulder and pulls him close. Her lips are right to his ear.

  “You’ve come. I knew you would. I tried to use the pistol, Sherlock, I truly did. But I was too frightened, and he was on me too fast. I just stepped from the door to throw out the wash water and he leapt at me. He took the gun.”

  “Clear off!” Lestrade addresses the crowd, puffing out his chest. “I am with the London Metropolitan Police.”

  “You is?” asks someone.

  “You’re just a lad!”

  “He is with the police!” says Beatrice, struggling to her feet with Sherlock’s help. “Call the Force, Master Lestrade. They must come immediately. Do you have a whistle? There’s supposed to be a constable patrolling out on Borough ’igh Street.”

  “You,” says Lestrade, full of confidence now as he extends a finger at a burly man, “head out and put up a cry for the Bobbies. There should be more than one close by.”

  Sherlock doesn’t want that. “Before you go,” he says, stopping the man, “did anyone see this happen?”

  “Who are you? Are you a policeman too? Is this the children’s brigade?”

  The crowd laughs.

  “Did anyone see this happen?” snarls Sherlock.

  “I didn’t, not me,” says a woman in a dirty brown bonnet.

  “Not I,” says a boy, not much older than Sherlock. “I runs out ’ere cause I ’ears the Leckie girl screaming terrible. I just sees her lying on the ground ’ere.”

  The burly man sets out, bellowing. “Police!” The rest begin to disperse.

  “Take me in,” says Beatrice in a weak voice. “Father will be home soon. I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  Lestrade rushes over and takes an arm, while Sherlock grips her by the other. They support her, gently walking her into the hatter’s shop. Holmes knows he can’t stay. He doesn’t want to be here when the police arrive. Inspector Lestrade is looking for a reason to shame him, perhaps even to find a charge against him.

  “Master Lestrade,” says Beatrice as she is set down on a chair, “you must tell your father that you saw this with your own eyes.”

  “I will, Miss Leckie, I most certainly will. We must put the full might of the police against this fiend now.” He takes his hat off and glows at her.

  “So,” asks Sherlock, “you were alone when this happened?”

  “I think so.”

  Trust no one. She was completely alone? Holmes has questions about the attack, but when Beatrice drops her head down to her chest in exhaustion, any sense of suspicion vanishes. There is blood oozing from wounds on her neck.

  “Miss Leckie!” cries Lestrade.

  “Is it bad?” she asks.

  “Master Lestrade, you must tend to her. There are clean clothes in the back room where the family lives and a pump out front in the little square. Put some water on those lacerations. And have her come to see Mr. Bell tomorrow. He works wonders with infections.”

  “I am quite capable of looking after her. And I shall find her a real doctor tomorrow.”

  “I must go.”

  Sherlock heads for the door and Lestrade removes to the back room. But just as Holmes is going out, Beatrice speaks to him in an anguished voice. “I have another injury, I think, on my leg. It’s … up high.”

  Sherlock turns. She is lifting her dress … and the undergarments. He sees her smooth white skin above her ankle, and then his eyes go up her shapely calf, past her knee, and the curve of her thigh. Up there, he sees another welt.

  “I … I … yes,” says Sherlock.

  “Have you ever seen such a thing?”

  “No. No, Beatrice, I haven’t.”

  She lowers her dress and weakly smiles at him.

  “I must be off!” He stumbles out the door.

  But he doesn’t go far. He waits in the shadows until the police come, two Peelers on the run. He expects Lestrade to emerge soon, but he doesn’t. It must be half an hour later, after the hatter has returned and more police arrive, that young Lestrade finally appears at the door.

  Sherlock pounces on him as he walks past.

  “OH!” he cries, his voice an octave higher than usual.

  “Calm yourself, Romeo.”

  “I … I am as calm as –”

  “The Lake District?”

  “You have no cause to call me Romeo!”

  “I don’t?”

  “No, you don’t. And if you persist … I will box your ears.”

  “Or shoot me with your pistol while hanging upside down from a lamppost?”

  “Don’t tell my father.”

  “Of course not … if you do me a favor in return. Stop by Scotland Yard on your way home and tell me if there is any news of Spring Heeled Jack attacks over the last few hours. And if so, I’d like some details, something the papers won’t have. We can walk there together. I’ll wait for you down White Hall Street.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The last few Bobbies who responded to our call were chattering like monkeys. They said they heard there were as many as three attacks tonight. The city will be terrified.”

  “Three attacks?”

  “And one wasn’t like the others.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was murder tonight, Sherlock.”

  “Murder?”

  “You won’t believe what he’s done.”

  A HALL OF MIRRORS

  Sherlock finds it difficult to get to sleep that night. Master Lestrade hadn’t been able to give him many details. What the young detective knew was that the Bobbies were certain that the Spring Heeled Jack had committed murder of a most gruesome kind, that the policemen who were on the scene came back with blood covering their boots, as if they had been wading through it. The Bobbies said there were rumors swirling in the city about it and that they couldn’t say more. They’d been told that policemen were being pulled from their beds and posted throughout London, and their Commissioner was talking about putting a Bobbie “on every street corner.”

  As Sherlock tries to settle down in his wardrobe bed, his mind is racing, imagining the events of last night and who the Jack really is. All he knows for certain is that Malefactor must have had a hand in at least one of the attacks, and that his rival isn’t above committing murder. How far did he go?

  Holmes tries to distract himself by reading a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps a fictional nightmare can replace a real one. But it doesn’t work. He sets it aside and lies back, listening to Bell tossing and turning upstairs, and as he finally starts to fade to sleep, he thinks the old man has risen and is descending the spiral staircase, dressed as the Spring Heeled Jack. But when he awakes with a start all is silent.

  He puts his head back on his feather pillow and is suddenly out in the city at night, crossing Westminster Bridge, rats scurrying along the cob
blestones, crows cawing on the House of Commons, and bats swarming in the black sky above. As he glances up to them, he sees the Jack on the balustrade wall and then notices Beatrice and Louise running at the other end of the bridge. The Jack rises and leaps after them at supernatural speed, closing in with each gigantic bound.

  Sherlock tries to run after them, but his feet are glued to the ground. He looks down and sees he is stuck in congealed blood. He has the sense that he is being observed. He turns and sees another Jack perched on the balustrade! It has Crew’s face. Sherlock hears a hiss and turns to the opposite side of the bridge. Another Jack is perched there! It has Sigerson Bell’s eyes. Another is near it, looking like Munby, a fourth is Malefactor, another John Silver, a sixth Irene, and another … Louise.

  Holmes looks down the balustrades and sees that they are filled with Spring Heeled fiends, all the way to Southwark. And across the river he spots them flying from the buildings, huge dark bats in the sky. He turns back to the House of Commons: the Jacks are lining it and the House of Lords, and a cluster is roosting on Big Ben. A veritable swarm upon the Palace of Westminster, their weight begins to make it crumble. Far away, in the direction Beatrice has gone, he hears her scream. The sound echoes throughout London, a blood-curdling shriek. The Jacks have her!

  He shouts out loud and comes bolt awake.

  He can’t sleep after that, and cannot wait for the sun to come up. In fact, it is still dark when he rises from his bed and makes his way to Trafalgar Square to await Dupin. What happened last night? Soon the sun peeks over the London skyline. Fat pigeons are about, watched from above by the crows. The vendors won’t be here for a couple of hours, but Holmes waits, under the Nelson Monument. The old, legless newsboy sells only one Sunday paper – Sherlock’s favorite, the blood-loving News of the World. A few folks stroll by, early church bells toll. When Dupin finally arrives he doesn’t bear his usual smile. He rolls into the Square on his board, his jaw set and his eyes dead serious. Sherlock sees the other newsboys appearing, every one of them looking somber.

  “Mr. Dupin!”

  “No joy in London today, Master ’olmes, no joy. They’ll be saying prayers in the churches, they will.”

  “I –”

  “I knows what you wants. And I’m ’alf of a mind not to give it to you. Why was you asking about the Spring ’eeled Jack a week ago? What does you know, boy?”

  Dupin doesn’t sound like his friendly self.

  “I know one of the girls who was attacked, that first time. She informed me soon after it happened.”

  “You means the one the Jack says is next?”

  “Next?”

  “The one whose door ’ad the note on it.”

  How does he know that?

  “I memorized it, I did, from today’s paper. It makes me blood run cold. I will kill the poor, the ’elpless, the females. Just like our government. I’ll start with you. Chaos! There is an animal, a freak of nature, on the loose in London, Master ’olmes. This ain’t like the one I remembers when I was young, or even the one from the Penny Dreadfuls. This one is the devil.”

  Why did Beatrice give that note to the police? He had specifically told her NOT to. Or did she give it directly to the press? That would be even worse. “What happened last night?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know it was terrible, that it was murder.”

  “It wasn’t murder, Master ’olmes, it was murders, five of ’em.”

  Sherlock’s heart thumps.

  “Five? It killed five people across London?”

  “Not across London … in just one place. It was a whole family, poor as church mice: the father, the mother … and three children, all little girls. It was ’orrible.”

  Sherlock is speechless. Could Malefactor do that? And if it wasn’t him, then who is this despicable fiend?

  “What is our world coming to? It’s days like this that makes you feel it is falling apart. The government ’as to respond to this, Master ’olmes, the Jack is forcing them. Mr. Disraeli, ’es being tested. It’s as though this Jack is saying that if the politicians won’t ’elp the poor more … ’e’ll kill ’em all. It’s blackmail and terror. ’ere’s the paper. No charge. I’d like to get them off me ’ands today. It’s like they is full of blood. When you read this, it will make you sick.”

  Sherlock takes the paper. The story isn’t difficult to find. It screams across the front page.

  EVIL IN THE ISLE OF DOGS

  A most heinous crime occurred last night in the marshes on the Isle of Dogs. After the sun had descended, a fiend dressed as the Spring Heeled Jack attacked and brutally murdered a family of five. They were residents of nearby Millwall, living in the shacks on Maria Street, the father, Mr. Treasure, a part-time employee of the local rope factory, his wife a seamstress. It is a rough, industrial area, south of the West and East India docks, near the construction location for the new Millwall pool. There are patches of crude homes amongst the factories and shipping wharves, and great stretches of deserted land and black mud. Police seldom patrol there. The Force believe Mr. Treasure was attacked and killed on the doorstep of his little home, which was then entered by the villain, who knocked the wife and little girls insensible and, with fiendish strength, dragged them all out into the marshes in the center of the peninsula. Screams were heard and trails of blood were discovered near the Iron Works, the Lead Works, and the rope-walk that leads to the marsh. Though much blood was found (in fact, it saturated the lying water in the area and turned it red) the bodies were not recovered. It is believed that the fiend butchered them and threw them into the Thames at the Blackwall Reach.

  A note was recovered, which the police have not allowed the press to see. One assumes it said something further about killing London’s poor, and its females, until the government does more to help them. It seems a vicious and backwards way to go about being of service to the unfortunate.

  Mr. Disraeli, who has been avoiding comment on other attacks, will almost certainly be addressing this incident in the Commons today. If he does not, Mr. Bright shall surely force him.

  There were two other Spring Heeled Jack attacks last night, without injury, in working-class areas. Both times the fiend materialized briefly and instantly vanished. The police do not know if these appearances were perpetrated by the same beast responsible for brutalizing the Treasure family.

  Sherlock looks up, feeling numb. This doesn’t seem real. He sees another man reading the same story not far away. The man looks shocked, his face as white as a Mayfair bed-sheet. The boy turns back to his own newspaper. It has one more paragraph.

  It is also rumored that a revolver was stolen from a desk at Scotland Yard some time yesterday. The news that some villain, perhaps this murderous one, may have infiltrated the inner sanctum of our Force does little to alleviate the fear now gripping our streets.

  It’s like one more blow in the stomach. And then his eyes fall on another report on the front page: of a bomb going off in a suburb, the act attributed to the Irish Fenians, those experts in terror, who are using fear to force the government to give Ireland its independence.

  It takes Sherlock a few seconds to be able to move. There aren’t many people in the square at this hour, but as he makes his way toward a stone bench, he notices that others who have newspapers are also staring at the front pages in disbelief. He shoves his copy of The News of the World into his coat pocket and slouches down onto the bench.

  Using Beatrice as bait, not an idea he was entirely comfortable with in the first place, is now impossible. The police will be watching the hatter’s shop like hunting dogs, likely stationing a half-dozen men there. Malefactor may not know that Sherlock was with Lestrade last night, but he might, and if the Jack is indeed one of his people, then it saw Holmes at the railway bridge. Sherlock glances around the square – he would be after me with all his might – I may be next. The boy has no real evidence that connects the Irregulars to this crime and even if he did, he doubts Inspecto
r Lestrade would listen to him. He would be more apt to find a way to arrest him.

  Bell always gives the boy Sunday mornings off. He can go where he wants, do what he must do. He sits on the bench, immobile. Perhaps I should simply hide. Beatrice is safe now – she doesn’t need his protection. But can I abandon this case? If Malefactor is indeed behind this Jack, turning angry, murderous, and anxious to contribute to the uneasiness in London, then he must be imprisoned, both for the city’s sake … and his own. I must act! But how?

  An hour passes. Various faces and actions involved in the crimes flit across his imagination. He begins to think about Louise. Who is she? Was there a reason why the Jack attacked her first? He considers Sigerson Bell’s comments about women – they are more than they seem.

  But at that moment, he is distracted by the sound of drums and bagpipes. It grows louder. The square has been filling up, now it stirs. Rising, the boy sees a mob coming down The Strand, led by men carrying clubs and axes, some holding placards high in the air. “FAIRNESS NOW!” “DOWN WITH THE RICH!” “IRISH SOLIDARITY! MUNBY FOR PM!” And one reads … “THE JACK IS RIGHT!” They are singing a union song. Sherlock can’t believe how big and disorganized the mob is – this appears to be a spontaneous demonstration. The parade flows from The Strand and across the street into Trafalgar Square, ignoring traffic and bringing it to a halt. As a gentleman in a black top hat passes the demonstrators, a tough-looking protestor shoves him and knocks him to the ground. When two Bobbies approach, they are surrounded and have to fight their way out, running toward nearby White Hall and Scotland Yard. Gentlemen and ladies – anyone dressed in clothing that looks better than working class – scramble from the square.

  “The Jack is a Irishman, I wagers,” Sherlock hears a dirty-faced man say. “Me member of Parliament even thinks it is. Said as much. They should round up them Paddies, and beat ’em until one confesses. The Jack wears green on ’is black suit, don’t ’e?”

  The crowd forms a big circle, and some of the working-class men begin to speak in its center, screaming profane words and abuse directed at the government and the Irish. Some make nasty racial comments about Disraeli. They are calling for violence, for an overthrow of the class system. Sherlock spies Alfred Munby in the mob, trying to blend in and look inconspicuous.