The Scroll of the Dead (22 page)

Just beyond the perimeter of the camp, Walker slumped down at the base of a skeletal tree, resting his back against the rough bark. Opening his medical bag, he extracted a bottle of brandy. Uncorking it, he sniffed the neck of the bottle, allowing the alcoholic fumes to drift up his nose. And then he hesitated.

Something deep within his conscience made him pause. Little did this tired army surgeon realise that he was facing a decisive moment of Fate. He was about to commit an act that would alter the course of his life for ever. With a frown, he shook the vague dark unformed thoughts from his mind and returned his attention to the bottle.

The tantalising fumes did their work. They promised comfort and oblivion. He lifted the neck of the bottle to his mouth and took a large gulp. Fire spilled down his throat and raced through his senses. Within moments he felt his body ease and relax, the inner tension melting with the warmth of the brandy. He took another gulp, and the effect increased. He had found an escape from the heat, the blood, the cries of pain and the scenes of slaughter. A blessed escape. He took another drink. Within twenty minutes the bottle was empty and John Walker was floating away on a pleasant, drunken dream. He was also floating away from the life he knew. He had cut himself adrift and was now heading for stormy, unchartered waters.

As consciousness slowly returned to him several hours later, he felt a sudden, sharp stabbing pain in his leg. It came again. And again. He forced his eyes open and bright sunlight seared in. Splinters of yellow light pierced his brain. He clamped his eyes shut, embracing the darkness once more. Again he felt the pain in his leg. This time, it was accompanied by a strident voice: “Walker! Wake up, damn you!”

He recognised the voice. It belonged to Captain Thornton. With some effort he opened his eyes again, but this time he did it more slowly, allowing the brightness to seep in gently so as not to blind him. He saw three figures standing before him, each silhouetted against the vivid blue sky of an Afghan dawn. One of them was kicking his leg viciously in an effort to rouse him.

“You despicable swine, Walker!” cried the middle figure, whose left arm was held in a blood-splattered sling. It was Thornton, his commanding officer.

Walker tried to get to his feet, but his body, still under the thrall of the alcohol, refused to co-operate.

“Get him up,” said Thornton.

The two soldiers grabbed Walker and hauled him to his feet. With his good hand, Thornton thrust the empty brandy bottle before his face. For a moment, he thought the captain was going to hit him with it.

“Drunk on duty, Walker. No, by God, worse than that. Drunk while your fellow soldiers were in desperate need of your attention. You left them... left them to die while you... you went to get drunk. I should have you shot for this – but shooting is too good for you. I want you to live... to live with your guilt.” Thornton spoke in tortured bursts, so great was his fury.

“There was nothing I could do for them,” Walker tried to explain, but his words escaped in a thick and slurred manner. “Nothing I could—”

Thornton threw the bottle down into the sand. “You disgust me, Walker. You realise that this is a court martial offence, and believe me I shall make it my personal duty to see that you are disgraced and kicked out of the army.”

Words failed Walker, but it began to sink in to his foggy mind that he had made a very big mistake – a life-changing mistake.

London, 4 October 1880

“Are you sure he can be trusted?” Arthur Sims sniffed and nodded towards the silhouetted figure at the end of the alleyway, standing under a flickering gas lamp.

Badger Johnson, so called because of the vivid white streak that ran through the centre of his dark thatch of hair, nodded and grinned.

“Yeah. He’s a bit simple, but he’ll be fine for what we want him for. And if he’s any trouble...” He paused to retrieve a cut-throat razor from his inside pocket. The blade snapped open, and it swished through the
air. “I’ll just have to give him a bloody throat, won’t I?”

Arthur Sims was not amused. “Where d’you find him?”

“Where d’you think? In The Black Swan. Don’t you worry. I’ve seen him in there before – and I seen him do a bit of dipping. Very nifty he was, an’ all. And he’s done time. In Wandsworth. He’s happy to be our crow for just five sovereigns.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Hardly anything. What d’you take me for? Just said we were cracking a little crib in Hanson Lane and we needed a lookout. He’s done the work before.”

Sims sniffed again. “I’m not sure. You know as well as I do he ought to be vetted by the Man himself before we use him. If something goes wrong, we’ll
all
have bloody throats... or worse.”

Badger gurgled with merriment. “You scared, are you?”

“Cautious, that’s all. This is a big job for us.”

“And the pickin’s will be very tasty, an’ all, don’t you worry. If it’s cautious you’re being, then you know it’s in our best interest that we have a little crow keeping his beady eyes wide open. Never mind how much the Man has planned this little jaunt,
we’re
the ones putting our heads in the noose.”

Sims shuddered at the thought. “All right, you made your point. What’s his name?”

“Jordan. Harry Jordan.” Badger slipped his razor back into its special pocket and flipped out his watch. “Time to make our move.”

Badger giggled as the key slipped neatly into the lock. “It’s hardly criminal work if one can just walk in.”

Arthur Sims gave his partner a shove. “Come on, get in,” he whispered, and then he turned to the shadowy figure standing nearby. “OK, Jordan, you know the business.”

Harry Jordan gave a mock salute.

Once inside the building, Badger lit the bull’s-eye lantern and consulted the map. “The safe is in the office on the second floor at the far end, up a spiral staircase.” He muttered the information, which he knew by heart anyway, as if to reassure himself now that theory had turned into practice.

The two men made their way through the silent premises, the thin yellow beam of the lamp carving a way through the darkness ahead of them. As the spidery metal of the staircase flashed into view, they spied an obstacle on the floor directly below it. The inert body of a bald-headed man.

Arthur Sims knelt by him. “Night watchman. Out like a light. Very special tea he’s drunk tonight” Delicately, he lifted the man’s eyelids to reveal the whites of his eyes. “He’ll not bother us now, Badger. I reckon he’ll wake up with a thundering headache around breakfast-time.”

Badger giggled. It was all going according to plan.

Once up the staircase, the two men approached the room containing the safe. Again Badger produced the keyring from his pocket and slipped a key into the lock. The door swung open with ease. The bull’s-eye soon located the imposing Smith-Anderson safe, a huge impenetrable iron contraption that stood defiantly in the far corner of the room. It was as tall as a man and weighed somewhere around three tons. The men knew from experience that the only way to get into this peter was by using the key – or rather the keys. There were five in all required. Certainly it would take a small army to move the giant safe, and God knows how much dynamite would be needed to blow it open, an act that would create enough noise to reach Scotland Yard itself.

Badger passed the bull’s-eye to his confederate, who held the beam steady, centred on the great iron sarcophagus and the five locks. With another gurgle of pleasure, Badger dug deep into his trouser pocket and pulled out a brass ring containing five keys, all cut in a different manner.
Scratched into the head of each key was a number – one that corresponded with the arrangement of locks on the safe.

Kneeling down in the centre of the beam, he slipped in the first key. It turned smoothly, with a decided click. So did the second. And the third. But the fourth refused to budge. Badger cast a worried glance at his confederate, but neither man spoke. Badger withdrew the key and tried again, with the same result. A thin sheen of sweat materialised on his brow. What the hell was wrong here? This certainly wasn’t in the plan. The first three keys had been fine. He couldn’t believe the Man had made a mistake. It was unheard of.

“Try the fifth key,” whispered Arthur, who was equally perplexed and worried.

In the desperate need to take action of some kind, Badger obeyed. Remarkably, the fifth key slipped in easily and turned smoothly, with the same definite click as the first three. A flicker of hope rallied Badger’s dampened spirits and he turned the handle of the safe. Nothing happened. It would not budge. He swore and sat back on his haunches. “What the hell now?”

“Try the fourth key again,” came his partner’s voice from the darkness.

Badger did as he was told and held his breath. The key fitted the aperture without problem. Now his hands were shaking and he paused, fearful of failure again.

“Come on, Badger.”

He turned the key. At first there was some resistance, and then... it moved. It revolved. It clicked.

“The bastards,” exclaimed Arthur Sims in a harsh whisper. “They’ve altered the arrangement of the locks so they can’t be opened in order. His nibs ain’t sussed that out.”

Badger was now on his feet and tugging at the large safe door.
“Blimey, it’s a weight,” he muttered, as the ponderous portal began to move. “It’s bigger than my old woman,” he observed, his spirits lightening again. The door creaked open with magisterial slowness. It took Badger almost a minute of effort before the safe door was wide open.

At last, Arthur Sims was able to direct the beam of the lantern to illuminate the interior of the safe. When he had done so, his jaw dropped and he let out a strangled gasp.

“What is it?” puffed Badger, sweat now streaming down his face.

“Take a look for yourself,” came the reply.

As Badger pulled himself forward and peered round the corner of the massive safe door, a second lantern beam joined theirs. “The cupboard is bare, I am afraid.”

The voice, clear, brittle and authoritative, came from behind them, and both felons turned in unison to gaze at the speaker.

The bull’s-eye spotlit a tall young man standing in the doorway, a sardonic smile touching his thin lips. It was Harry Jordan. Or was it? He was certainly dressed in the shabby checked suit that Jordan wore – but where was the bulbous nose and large moustache?

“I am afraid the game is no longer afoot, gentlemen. I think the phrase is, ‘You’ve been caught red-handed.’ Now, please do not make any rash attempts to escape. The police are outside the building, awaiting my signal.”

Arthur Sims and Badger Johnson stared in dumbfounded amazement as the young man took a silver whistle from his jacket pocket and blew on it three times. The shrill sound reverberated in their ears.

Inspector Giles Lestrade of Scotland Yard cradled a tin mug of hot, sweet tea in his hands and smiled contentedly. “I reckon that was a pretty good night’s work.”

It was an hour later, after the arrest of Badger Johnson and Arthur Sims, and the inspector was ensconced in his cramped office back at the Yard.

The young man sitting opposite him, wearing a disreputable checked suit which had seen better days, did not respond. His silence took the smile from Lestrade’s face and replaced it with a furrowed brow.

“You don’t agree, Mr Holmes?”

The young man pursed his lips for a moment before replying. “In a manner of speaking, it has been a successful venture. You have two of the niftiest felons under lock and key, and saved the firm of Meredith and Co. the loss of a considerable amount of cash.”

“Exactly.” The smile returned.

“But there are still questions left unanswered.”

“Such as?”

“How did our two friends come into the possession of the key to the building, to the office where the safe was housed – and the five all-important keys to the safe itself?”

“Does that really matter?”

“Indeed it does. It is vital that these questions are answered in order to clear up this matter fully. There was obviously an accomplice involved who obtained the keys and was responsible for drugging the night-watchman. Badger Johnson intimated as much when he engaged my services as lookout, but when I pressed him for further information, he clammed up like a zealous oyster.”

Lestrade took a drink of the tea. “Now, you don’t bother your head about such inconsequentialities. If there was another bloke involved, he certainly made himself scarce this evening and so it would be nigh on impossible to pin anything on him. No, we are very happy to have caught two of the sharpest petermen in London, thanks to your help, Mr Holmes. From now on, however, it is a job for the professionals.”

The young man gave a gracious nod of the head as though in some vague acquiescence to the wisdom of the Scotland Yarder. In reality he thought that, while Lestrade was not quite a fool, he was blinkered to the
ramifications of the attempted robbery, and too easily pleased at landing a couple of medium-size fish in his net, while the really big catch swam free. Crime was never quite as cut and dried as Lestrade and his fellow professionals seemed to think. That was why this young man knew that he could never work within the constraints of the organised force as a detective. While at present he was reasonably content to be a help to the police, his ambitions lay elsewhere.

For his own part, Lestrade was unsure what to make of this lean youth with piercing grey eyes and gaunt, hawk-like features that revealed little of what he was thinking. There was something cold and impenetrable about his personality that made the inspector feel uncomfortable. In the last six months, Holmes had brought several cases to the attention of the Yard which he or his fellow officer, Inspector Gregson, had followed up, and a number of arrests had resulted. What Sherlock Holmes achieved from his activities, apart from the satisfaction every good citizen would feel at either preventing or solving a crime, Lestrade could not fathom. Holmes never spoke of personal matters, and the inspector was never tempted to ask.

At the same time as this conversation was taking place in Scotland Yard, in another part of the city the Professor was being informed of the failure of that night’s operation at Meredith and Co. by his number two, Colonel Sebastian Moran.