The Secret Fiend Read online

Sherlock is all the way across Westminster Bridge now. This is going to be a longer trip than the one he made last night. Beatrice and Louise can’t take the narrow lanes and alleyways because that would truly make them vulnerable – too obvious a prey at which Crew could strike. No, the girls have been instructed to stick to the wider, brighter thoroughfares until just the right moment. Only then will Sherlock’s plan put them into a situation so perfectly tempting that the villain will not be able to resist. And when he strikes, so will Sherlock Holmes.

  As they leave the bridge, the wharfs, and flour mills visible on the south side of the river below, they enter Lambeth, east of Southwark. This is a mixed neighborhood filled with factories, theaters, slums, poor residences, and a few not so poor. Lambeth Palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury lords it over the state religion is nearby, but so are hard-living tradesmen, dock workers, and Astley’s Theatre. Sherlock keeps his eyes on the girls.

  It takes them about half an hour to make their way along Westminster Road past the Female Orphan Asylum, through St. George’s Circus, and up Borough High Street. Never once do they veer off the main roads, and there is no sign of the fiend. The girls keep to themselves in these areas and move quickly. As they approach Mint Street, they turn into Sherlock’s old haunts, down a narrow lane.

  The boy rushes up to the corner and turns. The pair is just ahead, still unmolested. He pulls his horsewhip from his sleeve and grips it tightly. Crew will be well aware that this is the perfect place to strike. But the thug doesn’t appear. Sherlock follows the girls down several small streets, even an alleyway, all the way to the hatter’s shop. They do just what they were instructed to do, but no attack occurs. The girls stop at the hatter’s door and turn back to Sherlock. Louise smiles shyly at him.

  “I’m glad, really,” says Beatrice. “You should not be doing this alone.”

  “I would have been fine. I was well prepared. I should have him in custody by now.”

  “Would you like to come in? Father won’t be ’ome for an hour.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “But –”

  “I must be getting back.”

  Louise looks at Beatrice, disappointed for her.

  “Don’t you two ever walk home this late again; if you absolutely must, ask a gentleman to accompany you.”

  “Thank you, Sherlock.”

  “Yes, thank you, Master ’olmes,” adds Louise.

  The boy stomps away from the shop, head down, upset at this missed opportunity. He was sure it would work.

  He is so intent on his thoughts that he almost misses it. He passes a short alleyway where a dark figure has its back turned to the street, struggling with something. Sherlock walks by, but then stops. Did he imagine it? The fog has started to settle in. He turns and peeks around the corner. There is indeed a figure there in the mist, tall and muscular, glancing out toward the street every now and then, as if he is doing something secretive. It takes a moment for Sherlock to realize what he is up to.

  He is putting on a costume. It is black and green. It has wings.

  CAUGHT IN THE ACT

  Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to jump the fiend as he leaves the alleyway, unprepared for an assault and unaware that he has been spotted. But as a burgeoning detective, Sherlock has a bad feeling about that. Something doesn’t make sense here. Crew, near the top of the Irregulars’ chain of command due to his unspeakable talents – trained by the incomparable Malefactor, shouldn’t be making blunders. And yet, he has allowed himself to be spotted, to have his back to potential enemies. Malefactor would know of the report on the front page of The Times, and would assume that the Force might be on alert, that citizens were watching their neighborhoods carefully. And yet, here is Crew, visible and vulnerable, changing into his costume.

  It’s a trap, thinks Sherlock. Malefactor is likely nearby with his other weasels. They could kill him right now, while he is alone in a poor area with no one to observe his body being dumped into the Thames. Holmes backs away, presses him self against the clammy wall of a building, his breath evident in short, nervous bursts in the cool early-March evening. There are no gas lamps; they have expertly drawn him here. Malefactor, the genius, had considered what Sherlock would do, and had been dead right. The boy looks up to the roof of the buildings. He can’t see anyone else … yet.

  The costumed figure emerges from the alley. Holmes has a clear view of it now. It is definitely big and powerful, about Crew’s size. It wears black boots with thick heels, a cape that gives the appearance of wings, dark ears sticking up in black hair, and something like claws on its gloved hands. It looks like the devil.

  Sherlock lets it move away, but keeps it in sight. He glances back, forward, up. Still no one else. The night is nearly silent, only the distant sounds of ships’ horns on the river can be heard.

  The boy moves forward, cautious, sticking to the foot pavement, almost glued to the walls. The Jack is virtually retracing Sherlock’s steps. The figure not only walks back up the street he just came from, but turns at the corner he turned at, turns at the next one too, then stops and looks down the next road … at the hatter’s shop!

  The area is somewhat open – a small, dirty square with a water pump at the center. Sherlock must be careful. But when the fiend walks straight toward the shop and then right up to the door, the boy has to set aside his caution. What does Crew want with Beatrice? Or is it Louise? Or does he indeed want me? Is this the best way to draw me into the open where the Irregulars can strike, murder me in front of the shop, on the very doorstep of my old family home?

  Sherlock can’t care about his safety anymore. It is time to be brave. He must not let them win. “You have much to do in life,” his mother had said to him as she died in his arms. There is much to be done at this moment – two girls to be saved, a fiend and his vicious crime lord to be denied. I cannot back down! Sherlock grips his horsewhip and runs toward the shop.

  The villain hammers on the door. Then he leaps up, impossibly high, seizing the ridge at the top of the latticed bow window next to the door. He will be above Beatrice and to her side when she comes to the entrance.

  Sherlock is running full out now, trying to observe peripherally as he goes, ready to be jumped by someone else from the side or behind. The Jack, clinging to the wall like a giant bat, is making a strange sound, growling deep in its throat. It is looking down at the door.

  The boy is still ten feet away when Beatrice appears. The Jack leaps down, its wings billowing out, its roar cutting the night. She looks up and screams. Behind her, Louise faints and falls to the floor, hitting her head on the stone threshold. But Beatrice reaches out to fight her assailant. Still, he doesn’t attack her. He lands a few feet from her and actually turns, as if to flee.

  When he does, Sherlock Holmes is on him!

  “Sherlock!” shouts the Jack in a voice the boy recognizes. It isn’t Crew’s.

  Holmes is balanced on his feet, just as Bell taught him, the whip coiled, like a cobra ready to strike. He snaps it downward, wrapping the leather around his opponent’s lower legs. Then he jerks the weapon back, toward his own hip. The fiend’s feet fly out from under him, and he lands on his back on the pavement with a slap. Pulling the whip toward him again, Sherlock frees it from the groaning brute’s legs and cocks it for another strike. Now for the coup de grâce. This next blow will finish his opponent, incapacitate him momentarily, and put him in so much pain that Sherlock will be able to bind his hands and feet with the whip. The boy is about to slash him across his face and eliminate his will to go on.

  But this Spring Heeled Jack is as strong as legend tells, for before Sherlock can follow through, he is lying on the ground, halfway across the street. His enemy has sprung up and kicked him with both feet, right in the midsection, in a thrust that felt like it was powered by a locomotive. Sherlock tries to rise and as he does, hears Beatrice scream again. Shutters pop open in the adjoining homes.

  The Jack is coming at him. The boy s
ees its face – red and angry, the horns sticking up through its hair. It isn’t Crew.

  Just as the fiend nears him, Sherlock gets to his feet. But his opponent seizes him … by the throat.

  “The key” Sigerson Bell once said during a particularly stirring encounter in the shop, stripped to his tight-fighting leggings and naked to the waist, the white hair on his back so thick it would make a polar bear proud, “is to make the opponent’s body move in directions it is not used to going. Directions, shall we say, that it would never choose. For example … like this!”

  With that, he had grabbed Sherlock by the tip of his smallest finger with his own thumb and forefinger and began to apply pressure. Immediately, the boy was flat on the ground, crying out for mercy.

  “One can inflict an enormous amount of discomfort by applying extreme pressure to even the tiniest part of the human body. You see, my boy, your baby finger does NOT want to move in the direction I am forcing it.”

  “Sir, for the love of God, release me!”

  Sherlock had never felt such pain.

  “Oh! I am sorry, Master Holmes, I get carried away.” He released the boy, who stayed on the floor, writhing in agony.

  “I could also have gripped you here!”

  And with that, he had reached down and grabbed the bare-footed Sherlock by the little toe of his left foot, holding it again between a thumb and forefinger. The pain was even more excruciating. The boy screamed so loudly that it would not have been surprising if the queen, three miles away in Buckingham Palace, had complained of the noise.

  “I can make you do anything I want now. Stand up please!”

  Sherlock leapt to his feet … or foot, bouncing up onto just one pin.

  “I can make you go this way.” He led Sherlock to the left, bouncing on one foot and crying out. “Or this way!” He pulled the boy to the right. “I can make you fly to the moon, if I choose.”

  “SIR! IT’S ME. YOUR APPRENTICE! SHERLOCK HOLMES!”

  The old man released him. He looked a little disappointed. “Yes, quite right. I am getting too involved, too intense about this again. You are correct to chide me.”

  Sherlock had slumped into a chair.

  “Now, if I seized you by the ear lobe, it would have the same …”

  The boy had jumped up and hidden behind the laboratory table.

  “Just tell me, sir, just tell me. No need for another demonstration.”

  “Quite right again.” A smile came over his lips. “If you REALLY want to hurt your opponent. If you want to finish him quickly, do what I just did … to a BIG bone!”

  The old man had showed him how.

  As the Spring Heeled Jack grabs Sherlock by the throat with his right hand, intent it seems, on ripping it out, the boy does the opposite of what most thugs in London street fights would do. The Jack’s arm is held straight out, stiff as a board. Rather than trying to simply knock the arm away, downward, Holmes grips his enemy by the forearm with his left hand, actually holding the Jack’s arm in place, keeping it straight and held tight to the throat. Now, he has the big bone that Bell spoke of in exactly the position he wants it. Continuing to hold him firmly, Sherlock seizes the fiend under the elbow with his other hand.

  “When you execute a maneuver, my boy, do so with the utmost violence!” Bell is fond of saying, his eyes alight. “No shrinking violets allowed!”

  Sherlock pulls down on the Jack’s forearm with his left hand and shoves up from under the villain’s elbow with the right, moving his arm in directions it most definitely does not want to go. He does so as if he wants the elbow to fly into the air and sail over the River Thames. There is a loud crack, the sound of a big bone fracturing in two.

  The Spring Heeled Jack’s scream pierces the night. He is instantly on the ground, gripping his misshapen arm, moaning with pain, pleading with Sherlock Holmes for mercy.

  Down the street somewhere, they hear a loud, piercing whistle.

  “John Silver!”

  Beatrice has rushed forward and is standing beside Sherlock, looking down at the injured villain. Louise has arisen from her faint and is walking toward them too, holding her head.

  “John Silver?” repeats Sherlock. It is indeed that boy, though not really a boy anymore. He lies in a heap, holding his arm, his clothes now obviously a crude costume he has made – his hair oiled up to look like it sprouts ears, his face smeared with coal, a ragged black cape with green stripes over his shoulders, black gloves on his hands, with nails protruding from the fingers.

  “I am sorry, Beatrice,” cries Silver, “wery sorry. I was just tryin’ to scare you. I liked you so in school, but you’d never looks at me!”

  “And you thought this would make me do so, John Silver?”

  “I knows that some girls, they like the bad ’uns, the scary ’uns. I is big and strong, and I can handle meself. Lots of girls, they like that. I thought I’d scare you, then come back and offer to protect you. I thought maybe I’d tell you later that I was the Spring ’eeled Jack … maybe you’d … kind of like that too … maybe?”

  “Then you don’t know a thing about me, Master Silver.”

  The big lad, his face white with pain, drops his head and grips his arm, then looks up to Sherlock. “You’ve learned to fight, you ’as, ’olmes.”

  It has been more than a year since Holmes last encountered John Silver, the former bully of Snowfields National School. He was the biggest boy there, and the most athletic, with muscles bulging through his soiled clothes, his feats in the little stone schoolyard extraordinary – he could leap like no one else. They had grappled once, on the cobblestone ground outside the school near the London Bridge Railway Station, Silver a full eleven stone in weight, pinning thin Sherlock down, spitting on him, slapping him in the face, calling him Judas the Jew, humiliating him in front of his classmates.

  But that was long ago. And much has happened since.

  “Yes, Silver, I have learned to defend myself. I have done quite well … for a Jew.”

  “I am sorry, Sherlock. I didn’t means nuthin’ by it. I never did, really.” The big lad, now seventeen years old, begins to cry.

  “You are a fool. But if Miss Leckie and Miss Louise will accept your apology, so shall I.” Beatrice and Louise nod. “I must tell you, however, that what you have been doing these last few days is against the laws of our nation, and your prank may have had more serious consequences than you imagined. Get to your feet!”

  Silver struggles to his pins, gasping with pain, gingerly holding his broken right arm with his left.

  “Last few days?”

  “Close your mouth. I heard a police whistle at the moment I fractured your arm. I have no doubt that a Bobbie or two will be here in moments. I will stand just a short distance up the street, in the shadows. It is foggy enough now that they won’t see me. You will stay here, in this square with Miss Leckie and her friend. You shall not touch them, speak to them, or even look at them … I will watch you! When the police arrive, Miss Leckie will inform them that you attacked her, just as you did Miss Louise on Westminster Bridge, leaping down tonight from the roof of her father’s shop, but you fell and fractured your arm, and also sprained both your ankles, so badly that you could not escape. You shall admit to both of your assaults, the one on the bridge and the one tonight. As you see the Force approach, you will pretend to be crawling away, your ankles injured. Lie down.”

  “But it wasn’t me, Master ’olmes! I promise you. I just got dressed up tonight, first time! I reads about it in the paper … and I thought of doing it. It wasn’t me that first time on the bridge, nor the other time! I just did it tonight.”

  “Sherlock,” says Beatrice, “perhaps ’e is telling the truth, perhaps –”

  Sherlock steps toward Silver, a menacing look in his eyes. “Get down! Get down or I will crack your other arm the way I did the first!”

  Silver immediately slumps to the cobblestones.

  “Miss Beatrice is indeed a lovely lady, too lovely
to be near the likes of you. She is kind and forgiving. But you sir, must feel the full force of the law against you, or you shall do something like this again. Take your medicine, sir, go to jail, contemplate your life … and change it!”

  “But …”

  “I will be in the shadows up the street … watching you.”

  “Sherlock,” says Beatrice, “I will tell them what truly ’appened. I will tell them ’ow brave you were, ’ow –”

  “If you care for me, Miss Leckie, you will say nothing of the kind. I have had it with seeking notoriety. It is enough for me that justice has been served tonight, that this fool is off the street. Perhaps there will be a day when I feel differently. Good night. I am glad that you are safe, and that your safety has been assured into the future.”

  She glows at him. He fades into the fog and hides in a doorway up the street. He must admit that it feels good to do it this way. In a sense, it makes him an even greater hero. But he shakes off that inflated notion. Justice. He has protected Beatrice the way he should have protected his mother, and Irene Doyle. That is what matters. Moments later, three Bobbies rush past, and Beatrice calls out to them.

  Sherlock Holmes walks slowly back through Southwark and over Blackfriars Bridge toward Denmark Street. He feels strong and powerful on the dark footpaths, not fearful in the least. I was wrong about the Jack being Crew, that’s true, but in the end, I found the villain. He takes all the back arteries, the little lanes. The case of the Spring Heeled Jack … solved.

  There are many ways that people get pleasure from life. Perhaps this is the way he will get his. Sherlock Holmes allows himself a grin.

  IT STRIKES AGAIN

  “Sherlock!” exclaims Sigerson Bell as he rushes into the shop the next morning. “You’re name is in the newspaper!”

  The boy had come home from Southwark exhausted, dropped into his little wardrobe, closed its doors, and fallen fast asleep, dozing soundly with nary a dream or a concern (a rare thing for him), completely satisfied with his night’s work – he had done the right thing in every respect. But the old man had thrown open his doors like something earth-shattering had to be announced. Sherlock rose up so suddenly that he slammed his head against the wardrobe ceiling.