The Veiled Detective (27 page)

“Of course.”

“Good,” he said softly, and then stepped back, merging with the crowd of pedestrians on the pavement. Within seconds, he was lost from sight.

I removed my hat and with my handkerchief mopped my brow. Moriarty was clever enough to know that the note was a blind. He knew that Holmes would not desert the city at this crucial time. The Professor would set his hounds on my friend. Never had Sherlock Holmes been more vulnerable.

“You’ll take tea with me, Mr Scoular, won’t you?” Mrs Hudson placed the kettle on the gas ring in readiness, but her visitor shook his head.

“On some other occasion, maybe,” he said politely, but without warmth. “I just need to know — the Professor needs to know where Sherlock Holmes is.”

Mrs Hudson, wiping her hands on her apron, sat down in her favourite chair by the hearth and smiled. “I don’t know. As you know, he rarely confided in me in the old days, but just recently I reckon he could give a clam a few lessons or two.” She chuckled at her own conceit, but Scoular’s disapproving glance cut her merriment short.

“When did you last see him?”

“I can’t be sure, and that’s the truth. He’s taken to wearing an assortment of wigs, false noses and all kinds of costumes, so I’m never sure whether it’s him in disguise or one of his visitors. I haven’t served him any meals now for over a week.”

Scoular gave a sigh of impatience.

“Doctor Watson came round this morning,” she continued, “so I assumed he was home then, but Watson popped in to see me on his way out and said that he’d waited for his friend in vain. There was a note saying he’d gone away for a few weeks — but it didn’t say where to.”

“I’ve seen the note,” said Scoular. “Rather too convenient to be real,
and most probably a dupe to make us think he has run away.”

Mrs Hudson shook her head. She didn’t know what Scoular meant. “You’re welcome to go up and look in his rooms, if you want.”

“I know that,” he rasped with impatience. “And I shall do so presently. In the mean time, if you see any trace of Holmes or anyone who might be Holmes, you must inform the Professor immediately.
Immediately
, is that clear?”

Mrs Hudson nodded. She knew this was an order, and it dismayed her. She had grown very fond of her eccentric and unpredictable lodger, and she didn’t want any harm to come to him. But she had no choice in the matter: he didn’t pay her wages.

“Good,” said Scoular, pulling on his gloves. “I will visit you again this evening after dark and search Holmes’ quarters, and then I’m afraid I shall be forced to start a little fire.”

“Oh, mercy me, no! You’re not going to burn down my lovely home?”

“Nothing as extravagant as that, I assure you. Merely a small conflagration in Holmes’ rooms which will destroy his files and records and render the place uninhabitable. Your quarters will be safe.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Mrs Hudson asked with asperity.

Scoular smiled for the first time since he had arrived. “I can’t.”

It took a great deal of persistence to persuade Mary to make a surprise visit to her aunt in Exeter. Instinctively, she knew something was wrong and that the matter was connected with Sherlock Holmes.

“Are you in any danger?” she asked, fixing me with her blue eyes.

After years of dissembling, lies came easily to me — but not when dealing with Mary. I hated telling her an untruth — but I had to. I don’t think she believed me when I told her there was nothing to worry about, but at the same time I felt she knew that what I had asked her to do was in her best interests.

That evening she packed, and I sent a telegram to Exeter to give Mary’s aunt notice of her arrival. Very early the following morning, I saw Mary off at Paddington Station. Not since my stay in the stinking cell in Candahar had I felt as miserable and alone as when the train chugged its noisy way out of the station, with Mary leaning out of a carriage window, waving goodbye. With Holmes in hiding and Mary gone, I had no one to turn to.

As I made my way back up the platform, a voice whispered in my ear.

“Going on a trip then, is she, the good lady wife?”

I turned to see a thin, rat-faced fellow in a loud brown-checked suit grinning back at me. With mock politeness, he raised his brown bowler.

“The Professor sends his compliments. No news of Mr Holmes, I presume?”

I shook my head. “No news,” is all I could find to say.

“And the wife?”

“Mary has gone to visit her aunt, who has not been well.”

“Left you all alone, has she? Well, never mind, Doctor Watson. We’re never far from your side. Do keep in touch.”

With an infuriating smirk, he raised his hat again and walked away. I stood rooted to the spot. I gazed unnervingly at the throng that passed by me. How many of them were the Professor’s men? What could I do? How could I act if I were under that fiend’s microscope all the time? Rather dejectedly, I continued on my way up the platform, brooding on what I considered to be a very dismal future.

It was then that I saw the newspaper billboard by the news kiosk. The headline ran: FIRE AT SHERLOCK HOLMES’ ROOMS.

W
ith practiced ease, Sherlock Holmes shinned up the drainpipe at the rear of 221B Baker Street, as he had done many times in the last month. Despite his wounded leg, he was still very agile, and without any trouble he was soon level with the window of his bedroom. Slipping up the sash, he managed to scramble inside. Immediately, acrid fumes assailed his nostrils and caught the back of his throat, causing him to stifle a cough.

The walls of the room, scorched by flames, were blackened by smoke, and the bed and mattress had been reduced to a heap of sooty debris. The floor was damp and slimy. Holmes had read in the papers how the fire brigade had arrived in time to arrest the spread of the fire and that there had only been internal damage to the upper floor. However, whatever the flames had failed to destroy, the water had completed the task.

Slowly Holmes moved into the sitting-room, and the sight before him made him gasp. This darkened shell was barely recognisable as his cosy old quarters. The furniture had been reduced to charred flakes, and no doubt his books, files and case-notes were those piles of damp ashes swept to the side of the room. Sherlock Holmes was a stranger to
sentiment, but at this moment he felt an overpowering wave of sadness sweep over him. It wasn’t just the loss of the material things — his files and notes — that upset him; it was the destruction of what had been his own closeted world, and, if he was honest with himself, the warm memories created here, particularly those he shared with Watson.

An errant breeze, finding entry through the smashed windows, stirred up a swarm of minuscule charred remnants which permeated the atmosphere like a cloud of tiny insects, and once again Holmes found himself holding his handkerchief to his mouth in order to prevent a fit of coughing. And then, suddenly, his nerves tingled and his senses quickened. Without proof, without deduction, he knew that he was not alone. There was some other presence in the room with him. Instinctively he reached inside his coat for his revolver, but before his fingers could take hold of the butt, a voice spoke to him from the shadows by the door.

“Leave your gun where it is, Sherlock Holmes.”

Holmes did not move.

“I am not playing games,” came the voice again. “Take your hand away from your gun and put your arms by your side, or I will blow your head off.”

Holmes had met many villains in his time, and he knew when they were bluffing or not. This man was deadly serious. He retrieved his hand from his coat pocket, leaving the revolver
in situ
, and did as he was told.

The figure stepped from the shadows. A shaft of morning light from the window fell across his face. The detective recognised the man immediately. He was Scoular, one of the Professor’s more ruthless lieutenants. He was grinning, his gun trained on Holmes.

“I knew that you would come,” Scoular said, the grin broadening. “I knew that you couldn’t resist coming back here to check the damage and see what you could salvage from your records. And you didn’t disappoint me.”

“So this is
your
handiwork, is it?”

“It is. And I am quite proud of my efforts. I can assure you that there is not one sheet of paper left in a legible form in the whole place. I searched thoroughly before setting fire to it. Any documents referring to the Professor were taken away and destroyed separately.”

“How very thorough.”

“Oh, we are, Mr Holmes. We are. You should know that.” The smile faded. “For a man of your intelligence and skills, you have been rather stupid. Headstrong. You should have known that if you intended to meddle in the affairs of the Professor, you would get more than your fingers burned. You should have known that you would lose your life.”

“I was aware of that possibility, but nothing ventured, nothing gained,” said Holmes urbanely, but his eyes were focused on Scoular’s revolver, which was aimed at his heart.

“You should have been dealt with a long time ago. I urged it, but the Professor preferred to play his little game of cat and mouse with you. But that is over now. This time, you have gone too far.”

“Ah, you mean the affair of the Elephant’s Egg? Reed has been captured and the ruby is safe, eh?”

“You should have dropped it, Mr Holmes, you really should.”

“It is not in my nature to give up. It has been a long crusade, but one which will have a successful conclusion.”

Scoular took a step forwards and cocked the pistol. “Not for you, Mr Holmes.”

“Killing me will not alter the outcome now, I’m afraid. Assured as I am of the eventual destruction of Moriarty’s organisation, and the capture of its leading figures, including yourself and the Professor, of course, I am happy to sacrifice my life. I am pleased to think that I have been able to free society from any further effects of his presence. In any case, with this matter my career has reached a crisis, and I realised from the start that it might end with my death.”

“Then you are more foolish than I first thought. To throw away your life in the feeble belief that you could beat the Professor.”

“You do not understand, Scoular. You are so warped with your own criminal machinations that you cannot see the dark shadow that you and your kind throw over this city. How corrupt and filthy you are. How your evil doings destroy the goodness and the hope in the teeming masses that fill our streets, attempting to live good and simple lives. Your robberies, your forgeries, your murders, your greed — they diminish us all. Injustice tarnishes everything it touches. You, Moriarty and his kind are carriers of a disease, a plague of evil. How could I rest, how could I care one jot about my own life, while this plague remains unchecked?”

“Well, you are correct about one thing; I do
not
understand your point of view. But I do know that you will never beat the Professor.”

“Oh, how tired I am of this conversation, Scoular. If you have a task to perform, pray carry it out now before I die of boredom.”

Scoular frowned. He could not believe how resigned Holmes seemed, considering that he was moments away from death. He was either very brave or very foolish. The fact that he could not tell which unnerved him.

In truth, Holmes was relaxed because he saw no way out of his dilemma. What he had said to Scoular was the truth. He was prepared to sacrifice his own life to secure the destruction of Moriarty’s empire. One did not fear the inevitable, one accepted it. He had taken the main incriminating documents from Baker Street the previous day and left them in a safe place that only Inspector Patterson knew about. Once these were safely in the hands of Scotland Yard, the operation would be set up to arrest Moriarty and dismantle his organisation. Holmes knew that he might not have many minutes to live, but Moriarty had but a few days before his game was up also.

“I hear that you are not a religious man, Mr Holmes. You have no prayers?”

“I have no prayers.”

Scoular shrugged and held the gun at arm’s length. “Goodbye then, Mr Holmes.”

A gunshot thundered and reverberated in the burned-out chamber.