Becoming Holmes Page 17

  Sherlock wanted most of this. He wanted to be in Crew’s lair so he could see all the snakes. But he hadn’t thought he would be lying on this marble bed, woozy and weak, with the slithering creatures between him and Crew, his enemy holding a gun. Holmes cannot get at his target. He cannot apply his Bellitsu or even the horsewhip he has concealed on himself for this night’s dangerous assignment.

  “Biters?” says Crew as if he were a mere chicken farmer considering the method he might employ to butcher a hen. He scratches his chin, then picks up a long wooden stick with a metal pick on the end and looks at Sherlock with cold eyes that express no emotion. “Eight poisonous biters,” he adds, for his victim’s information. “First, I present the Black Mamba!”

  He points the stick at a frightening green and gray snake more than ten feet long that is emerging out of the scum pond.

  “Very deadly, venomous, found in Africa, lovely name.” The snake coils around his stick as if in affection for him, but he gently shakes it off.

  Holmes watches it, terrified.

  “The Sidewinder.” Crew points to another snake, a creamy colored little devil no more than two feet long, with brown dots on its back. It had been moving in a bizarre fashion toward Crew, sideways, and now rattles as he indicates it. “From Mojave Desert, symptoms of bite: swelling, nausea, chills, shock, then death.” In his growing excitement, Crew is actually stringing together his version of sentences.

  He turns to another little one. “Saw-Scaled Viper, from India.” As Sherlock looks at it, his mind now numb with fear, it sits at Crew’s feet and coils against itself, rubbing its serrated brown scales until they produce a sizzling sound. “Nice noise. Deadly,” adds Crew.

  A six-foot-long brown and white snake now approaches him, as if seeking his attention. “Indian Cobra!” he cries, turning to it. It stands up, its neck flaring out in the cobra swell. From where Sherlock lies, the pattern on the back of the neck looks like a pair of eyes and a smiling face. “Venom paralyzes muscles, acts in fifteen minutes.”

  Crew pivots. “The Boomslang!” he shouts. “Lovely name too!” A four-foot-long snake, a shockingly bright green and black, its skin almost glowing, comes forward. “African,” mutters the pudgy fiend. The killer opens its jaws at its master in a massive yawn, its big fangs dripping. “Internal bleeding, then death.”

  Crew smiles. “Such choices!”

  Another snake, at least six feet long, comes up and coils around his foot. “The Puff Adder. Idiots say Swamp Adder. Deadliest snake in Africa! Has killed the most human beings!”

  Sherlock is now sweating profusely. He feels like crying. He wants to get to his knees and beg Crew for his life. But he can barely move. The snakes are beginning to hiss together, like an evil choir.

  “Most prized biters?” asks Crew as he turns to a horribly huge one. “I present the King Cobra! From the Asian continent.” It is at least fifteen feet long! Sherlock can’t believe his eyes. A gigantic cobra! It is green and black, pale yellow on an underbelly that is now visible as it twists. It stands up in a perfect cobra stance and looks like it wants to strike Crew. “Biggest venomous snake ever!”

  Then he turns to one that Sherlock can’t quite see yet, sulking, it almost seems, in a corner. Several rats and a lizard lie beside it, very still. It is nearly ten feet long, pale on its belly and purplish-black along its long top. “Mr. Holmes, look, the Inland Taipan, world’s most poisonous snake. One bite can kill one hundred people!” He glows at the boy as if his captive should be thrilled.

  “Please!” cries Sherlock. “Please! Spare me!” He wishes he had not come here. He thinks of Irene and Beatrice and their tender touch. He thinks of his home above the hatter’s shop when he was a child, and of his dear friend Sigerson Bell. He wonders why he ever thought he should pursue this life of fighting crime.

  “Yes?” asks Crew. He is smiling now, as if he is actually enjoying talking so much.

  “I will leave here and never bother you again. I will give up crime fighting forever. I will let Malefactor be!”

  “But,” whines Crew, “you have not met my greatest pet, one chosen for you, Mr. Holmes.” He turns to the wall. “Satan?” he calls out.

  It emerges. It is the one Sherlock saw coiling around Crew from above, the one that looked like a monster from a book, whose size Holmes could not fully estimate. He can now. It keeps coming and coming and coming, slithering out from a place against a wall away from the others, almost thirty feet long! It is a sickly greenish-brown with black spots like diseases on its skin. Its head is the size of a football! Holmes can see now that it is chained to the wall near its tail, a hook impaled in it, so it cannot fully get free. Perhaps Crew fears it a little too.

  “World’s largest snake!” whines the villain. “Constrictor for the ages, the ANACONDA!”

  Sherlock realizes that he is seeing the thing that he had come to find tonight. The murder weapon! If he had only been able to live, he could have shown it to the police. He could tell them that this is what murdered Grimsby. They would have believed it. It is evidence enough. He thinks of that thick, purplish ring around the little man’s chest, of something smashing his ribs, bursting his lungs. Something, as the doctor would testify, inhuman.

  But it is too late now. He has miscalculated. He will never utter another word to the police.

  “Come, Satan,” says Crew, indicating Sherlock to the snake. He sets his pistol on the floor and bends down to unleash the reptile. In an instant, it is free! The anaconda slithers toward the bed. Holmes’s eyes grow huge as he gapes at it. He begins to whimper. He cannot stop. Terror overcomes him. He thinks of his mother.

  “You have much to do in life,” he hears her say. When he does, he stops crying. He stiffens himself and turns on his brain. As weak as he is, he cannot give up. He looks at Crew’s face, drool now coming from his lips as he anticipates seeing the anaconda crush Malefactor’s greatest enemy. Crew steps forward with the snake, to get a closer look.

  Don’t give up.

  In his fear and his feeble state, he had assumed that he had no way of fighting back. But now he thinks about Crew setting the gun down on the floor. Why did he not retrieve it once he had loosed the snake? If I could get to my feet, he would not have a weapon. He remembers Crew embracing him as he slammed him down onto the marble bed. Why did he do that? He feels no affection for anyone. He thinks of Crew caressing his arms, and it comes to him. My horsewhip! Crew was feeling for his horsewhip up his sleeve. He has seen me use it before. He knows where I keep it. But it wasn’t there. That had relaxed him. That’s why he thought he could put the gun down. It is five or ten strides behind him. Until now, he has kept his eyes glued on Sherlock. He thinks I don’t have my weapon. He is being careless, unguarded. He may even look away. Sherlock locks his eyes onto Crew. And, just as he expects, the weird one turns away for a second, almost as if to see the expressions on his snakes’ faces, as if they were a bizarre audience whose reaction to this horrible death he wants to observe.

  The anaconda is within a few feet.

  I must time it right.

  Summoning every ounce of strength he has left, Sherlock reaches down and seizes his horsewhip, which he had put in a different place tonight, into his brand new boots that Bell had given him, that ride almost halfway up his calf. It had struck him as a much better place to conceal his great weapon.

  He staggers to his feet as fast as he can, whip in hand. Both the snake and Crew, whose head has snapped back to his victim, freeze. Sherlock cracks it at the monster constrictor, wrapping it around its big head in a strangling grip. The snake writhes in pain and pulls the whip from Sherlock’s hand with its fangs. Its strength is inhuman. It coils around the whip in a frenzy, squeezing itself, as though it intends to crush its own body.

  “No!” cries Crew and rushes to it. His interest in Sherlock evaporates. Holmes drops from the marble bed and rushes away, dancing through the other snakes that now dart and strike at him. One bite will kill him before he eve
n reaches London Bridge, several will make his insides explode. But he gets by the snakes, desperate not only to live, but to destroy this villain and his powerful master. In seconds he is up the steps and slamming out the door.

  “Satan! My baby!” he hears Crew cry out.

  It would normally take Holmes nearly half an hour to get back over the river and to Trafalgar Square just south of Denmark Street. This time, adrenaline pumping through his veins like a waterfall, he makes it in twenty minutes. But he doesn’t go north there. He swings west to Scotland Yard.

  His plan is still in motion.

  25

  TWO DOWN, ONE TO GO

  It is past midnight, the early hours of the morning, black and foggy on the streets of London. Even Whitehall Street looks deserted and creepy. But Sherlock barely notices. He gets to police headquarters, stumbles up the stone steps and thunders through the thick wooden doors. His face must be as pale as a ghost’s, for the night sergeant, who knows him well, looks alarmed at his appearance; and this, despite his natty attire.

  “Master Holmes, what is wrong?” he cries.

  “I need Lestrade!”

  Young G. Lestrade is not a great detective, nor will he ever be, but he uses what brains he has to get ahead. Those brains told him long ago to make a friend of Sherlock Holmes. They also told him to be sure that Holmes has at least one other friend at Scotland Yard, in case Lestrade himself is not about when something matters. That individual is the night sergeant. This young man, not much older than G. Lestrade and low himself on the totem pole of police status, has been told in no uncertain terms – with the inducement of Lestrade’s future influence to motivate him – that the brilliant half-Jew is never to be turned away if he arrives with private information for G.L.

  The sergeant doesn’t hesitate. “I shall send a boy!” he says and dispatches one with great haste to young Lestrade’s new rooms in a lodging house in Chelsea, the first bachelor quarters of his life. The lad flies out into the night with shillings for a fast hansom cab clutched in his hand.

  In less than an hour, a bleary-eyed Lestrade appears in his cramped office in Scotland Yard to see a very well-dressed but pale Sherlock Holmes moving with the energy of a hungry wolf in tight little circles on his floor.

  “Holmes, what has happened?”

  “Nothing. Not yet. It is about to.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Bring a man, a big man, a very big man, as tough as nails, and come with me. Now!”

  “Come with you where and for what purpose?”

  “I can prove who murdered Grimsby.”

  “Really?”

  “I can snare him for you tonight. And when I do, I will be delivering into your hands not only a despicable villain who has already murdered countless others in his brief life, but someone who will, I guarantee, kill many more if we do not snuff him out!”

  Sherlock’s eyes are blazing. It almost frightens Lestrade. He often thinks that his will to fight crime is Holmes’s equal, but at moments like these, he knows it is not.

  “And furthermore, I believe I can, with this arrest, put before the courts someone else – the spider who spins the greatest web of crime in all of London, who plans to dominate it in future years, mastermind it, be the power behind the murder, the robbery, and the moral contamination of great masses of our populace!”

  “Sherlock that is a mighty –”

  “Grimsby is dead. Crew is in his lair surrounded by evidence that can destroy him. Malefactor awaits my final stroke! He will be there, tonight, I know it!”

  “Calm down, my friend.”

  The cords are bulging in Sherlock’s neck.

  “Come with me! Now!”

  “Where, Holmes?”

  “To the Cross Bones Graveyard in Southwark!”

  Lestrade is well aware of that satanic place. The very mention of it, uttered with such vehemence by the boy, makes him start. It is two o’clock in the morning, a witching hour, pitch black outside.

  “Cross … Cross Bones?”

  “Come with me, Lestrade, and make your career!”

  Fifteen minutes later, Holmes, Lestrade, and the burliest constable on the night shift at Scotland Yard, a massive man named Landless with a bulldog head and three feet across the shoulders, are in a black police coach heading down Fleet Street toward London Bridge. The young detective can’t believe he has been convinced to do this. Neither can he believe that he has taken the step of securing a revolver with a six-bullet chamber for this raid. But Sherlock is adamant about what awaits them. He is certain too about the reward. Nothing, he is insisting, will strike a greater blow against crime in this century than this operation tonight. Lestrade thinks of Grimsby as an inconsequential little man, Crew of only slightly greater interest, and Malefactor as a retired young street thug, now long gone from the city. But if Holmes says they are much more, they almost certainly are.

  “Lestrade,” says Sherlock just before they reach Southwark, “if we are to survive tonight –”

  “Survive?”

  “And live to be adults pursuing our noble careers, we must not be longstanding friends.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “It is best, in the future, that we act strictly as professionals without conjoined pasts. You did not know me in my youth, nor I you. It will serve us well.”

  There are times when the young detective wonders if Sherlock Holmes is insane. And yet, here Lestrade is, following him into mortal danger.

  When they arrive, Lestrade can barely bring himself to look at Cross Bones Graveyard, let alone enter it. The police never go near it; no one does, as far as he knows. But when he glances through the bars of the gates and sees the crypt that Holmes points out, he can’t help being intrigued. He is almost convinced that he should set aside his fears. When Sherlock climbs onto the gate and leaps over, he knows he must follow. Landless boosts him up and stands behind him. He edges over the top, over the rusty spears, and drops down gingerly onto the putrid grounds. Landless follows with a thud. The giant man has the sort of thick, shaved head that has the same expression on both sides – both his face and neck are impassive, emotionless, as if they are made of hard muscle.

  No one has followed them. Or is that true?

  As Sherlock approaches the crypt, he motions for the other two to be silent. They are actually tiptoeing. Lestrade, unbeknownst to his companions, is fighting to keep from vomiting. The smells are overpowering him, the knowledge that he walks upon layers of rotting bodies unnerves him, and the sight of decomposing skulls unmans him. He is happy to reach the cold marble surface of the crypt and set one shaking hand against it; the other grips his revolver at the ready.

  Sherlock is sure that Crew will still be in the crypt. The villain fears no man – he will not care that Holmes knows where he lives. Nor does he have any idea that Sherlock has the evidence to convict him of Grimsby’s murder.

  The boy has a plan. Now he just needs to execute it.

  When they reach the hole in the wall, Lestrade is instructed to peer in. He does so for a long time and when he finally pulls his face back, the startled look in his eyes indicates that Crew is back on his marble bed with his extraordinary snakes. Sherlock takes a glance too. Satan looks to have survived his desperate grapple with the horsewhip, his deathly attack upon himself, and Crew is virtually purring as he lies amongst his colorful reptilian charges.

  It is time to move in.

  Holmes whispers into Lestrade’s ear and then sneaks around to the door of the crypt. He finds the keyhole and begins working on the lock inside it. He has sprung similar puzzlers over the years, his skill borne of instructions he’s secretly heard Malefactor give his minions. He even keeps a tool for these purposes now, a perfectly pointed and bent big pin.

  But it doesn’t work tonight.

  As he labors away, the door suddenly opens with great violence, knocking him forcefully to the ground. His face is driven into the smelly earth and Crew again has him by the neck.
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  “Sherlock Holmes,” whines Crew, right into his ear as he lies on top of him, “being stupid.” He hauls him to the door, closes it behind them, and drags him down the stairs again, muttering. “Sherlock Holmes almost killed Satan. Sherlock Holmes must die.” He slams him onto the marble bed again. He has no need to feel the boy’s arms or even inspect his boots this time. The boy carries no weapons in his hands, and the horsewhip lies in the swamp water, where Satan now keeps it.

  “Jew-boy will die. Hate Jews. Hate,” says Crew. As he turns, he keeps whispering, “Hate darkies, hate Chinamen. Hate.” This time he doesn’t bother to call on the Black Mamba, the Taipan, the Sidewinder, or the Saw-Scaled Viper – he merely asks for the giant anaconda. It is no longer tethered.

  “Satan?” he says, as though inquiring if a child would like a candy. The big reptile crawls forward.

  “Is this what you did to the others?” asks Sherlock in a shaking voice.

  “Not them all.”

  “But some?”

  “Oh, yes. Great fun.”

  “Who?”

  Satan is out of his swamp, slithering across the floor. He is between Crew and Sherlock. The boy is weaponless and cannot get away.

  The fiend names a few men, mostly well-known criminals who stood in Malefactor’s way, who have disappeared from the streets the last few years. Crew lists his victims with great pride, uttering each name clearly.

  “I knew it,” says Holmes.

  “Clever Jew.”

  “You did it for Malefactor.”

  “Malefactor, yes. Not his real name.” Crew almost bows, and shakes his head.

  “And Grimsby?” Sherlock’s eyes are large, staring at the anaconda.

  “Grimsby?” asks Crew.

  Satan is nearly at the bed.

  “He was thrown into the river near here!” cries Holmes. “He had a horrible, thick welt around his chest! His ribs were broken! He was squeezed to death, the doctor said, the doctor will testify, by something inhuman!”