The Dragon Turn (23 page)

H
olmes descends the stairs in the direction of the sounds. He can hear the band in the orchestra pit to his right, the audience reacting out in front of it, and Hemsworth’s voice, as clear as a bell.

“This is the night of nights for our show.”

Our show? Has he ever called it that before?

“This is the greatest night of magic in the history of the London stage, in the history of magic anywhere! On this first day of September 1869, we will shock the world!”

He was always a humble man. He won’t be so proud when he is sitting in jail awaiting his justice!

Sherlock has reached the bottom of the stairs. He takes a few careful steps and sees a cage, about twenty feet away, barely discernable in the darkness, about the size of the one used for the dragon on show nights. Something is inside, making that hissing sound, and thrashing about. But he can’t figure out what it is, yet. He edges closer. It lunges at him … and he sees it!

A gigantic lizard! A monstrous reptile!

It snaps at the bars of the cage, just inches from the boy. Its big face is confronting him, eyes as black as a crow,
huge, razor-sharp teeth bared. Sherlock jerks back and its forked tongue snakes out almost a foot, nearly touching his cheek. Several feet away, in an instant cold sweat, he stares at it in disbelief. It had reared up, but now it drops down again, coiling itself as if to make another lunge. Green-gray, with a six-foot-long body and a four-foot tale, it looks heavier than a fully grown man. There are fake wings attached to its back, where it can’t reach behind and rip them off.
It wants to kill me
. But Sherlock can see, up this close, that its legs are shackled. Thick ropes, like those used to moor an enormous ship, hold the lizard to the back of the cage.
That’s why it can’t get at Venus
.

Where, in God’s name, did Hemsworth find this creature?
Deep in the jungles of Africa? In the deserts of the Holy Land? On a distant island in the Indian Ocean? Sherlock remembers Bell telling him that there may be dinosaur-like beings somewhere on earth, and that there is more in this world than is dreamt of in his imagination.
There certainly is
.

“Dragon, are you ready?” says a voice in a whisper.

Sherlock starts and freezes, then silently slips away in the darkness and plasters himself against a wall a few carriage lengths away.

It is Riyah. He is holding a small lantern, directed at the ground, so he can find his way. He carries an axe in his hand. He drops it near the big ship ropes. His voice sounds different. It is rich and mellifluous, almost theatrical, even as he whispers. There is absolutely no hint of a German accent.

“This is our big night, our special night,” he says to the beast, keeping his voice low. “You will have to wait a
little longer this evening, dragon. But it will be worth it. You will get your prize onstage this time. Yes, you can have it tonight!”

The voice sounds vaguely familiar. He imagines it at full volume. It is beginning to dawn on Sherlock whom Oscar Riyah may be, and the possibility is startling him right out of his trousers.
It can’t be!

“Come here!” he hears Riyah hiss. Sherlock looks toward the little spotlight the lantern is casting in the darkness. Riyah has Venus in his filthy hands.
She has gotten here so quickly!
It is difficult to see her face, but it is obvious, even from where he is, that white makeup has been applied to every inch of her skin that is visible, and there is a good deal of that. She has a crown on her head, the purple Egyptian robe too, though it is wide open, displaying that skimpy muslin outfit underneath, nearly see-through, showing much of her body, and fitting tightly to her shape. Her hands are tied behind her back now, her eyes blindfolded, her mouth gagged. She struggles against him.
Why is he doing this? They are backstage and the audience can’t see her! She knows what she has to do. Why does he have to force her? Does it really scare her that much? But she told me that she didn’t even see the dragon, and didn’t seem to care about it
.

Riyah takes her around to the front of the cage, opens a door there and shoves her in, securing the door behind her with a small lock. It will hold
her
in, but not the dragon: another reason it is shackled. She clings to the bars at the front of the cage, as far away from the beast as possible. It comes forward a foot or so, its big front claws moving up
onto a short ramp between them, elevating the front of its body, making it look more like a slightly upright dragon, than a huge, low-to-the-ground monitor lizard.
Very clever
. But it can’t get any closer to her. It darts its forked tongue in her direction.

Sherlock thinks again of how quickly Venus must change from one outfit to the next. She is an efficient, seasoned professional. But then something else occurs to him. He remembers the riveting sight of the beautiful “African princess” undressing in her room. Beside her, on a table, he had glimpsed her outdoor clothing. That, obviously, was what she was about to put on … not what she is wearing now in the cage. He realizes, too, that because he had been so enthralled by her beauty and the excitement of the moment, it hadn’t even dawned on him that it made no sense for her to be taking
off
that nearly see-through outfit.
Taking it off! How could she have been taking it off … if she was about to wear it under the robe inside the cage?

Sherlock moves as fast and as silently as he can back to the staircase and up it. He opens the little door at the landing and gets down into the passageway, scurrying back along it on his hands and feet until he comes to Venus’s room. He turns over and looks up. She is still there! And fully dressed in her outdoor clothing, Juliet again, sticking the last pin in her hat! She vanishes from his sightline toward the hallway.

She isn’t the princess in peril! It isn’t her in the cage! But then … who is it?

Sherlock rushes frantically back down the passageway toward the landing. When he opens the little door and
stands up, he can’t see the spotlight near the cage. Riyah has disappeared. Then he hears Hemsworth’s baritone booming in the theater, sounding excited.

“I told you this was the night of nights for magic!”

Sherlock spots Riyah, racing up a series of winding stairs against the wall on the other side of the room, spotlight bouncing in front of him. Those stairs go up to the stage. Riyah is throwing off his greatcoat, revealing a glittering costume, pulling off a long-haired wig, ripping away his beard, putting on his spectacles.

“I am going to bring to conclusion, right here on our stage tonight,” exclaims His Highness, “the greatest illusion in the history of the world. They said I murdered the Wizard of Nottingham. I did not. Tonight … I shall … BRING HIM BACK TO LIFE!”

Riyah is Nottingham!

Sherlock hears the audience gasp. The Wizard is standing before them, returned from the dead, emerging out of darkness at the wave of His Highness’s hand.
Hemsworth, indeed, did not murder his rival. He has been working
with
him. Those bits of flesh came from an animal
. “You are falling for my tricks,” that was what His Highness told him. Now Sherlock knows what it really meant.
But it wasn’t just a trick, it was an elaborate web of tricks, focused on manipulating public opinion, on employing Sherlock Holmes and Irene Doyle and Inspector Lestrade and the Metropolitan London Police Force and every newspaper in the city … as actors in the illusion. It was coughs and fluttering curtains and secret chambers; it was adjustable hats marked with initials
. The audience is thundering its applause,
stamping its feet. Nottingham has been using Hemsworth and his creature to perform his greatest trick. They both have their
revenge
.

But when Sherlock thinks of that word he thinks of Venus’s verbal portrait of her boss, the one she painted on the streets that night not long ago. She said he was a beast, cruel and vicious, intent on fame, and that Nottingham was just as bad. He thinks of what she said about the woman who left both of them: that she was a free spirit, that she seduced Nottingham, and then found others more desirable than the Wizard. She has a weakness for men. She crossed these two proud men
publicly
 … they, whom no one should cross. Holmes thinks of Juliet saying that Hemsworth often spoke of the gruesome ways he would like to murder his philandering former wife.

So … Mrs. Nottingham has vanished, has she?

Sherlock looks across the dark room to the white woman in the cage with the giant lizard. He sees her holding on to the bars at the far end of her prison, her mouth gagged, eyes blindfolded … terrified.
Mrs. Nottingham!
Then Sherlock remembers the axe that the Wizard had in his hands just a few minutes ago. He dropped it near the big ship ropes that hold the dragon back, keep it from attacking anything that might be in its cage.

“And now, for the great moment!” Shouts the Wizard up on the stage. “But tonight it will be more real than ever before! Tonight, look, if you dare, at the greatest, most violent, most gruesome illusion the world has ever seen! You shall see its CONCLUSION!”

The audience is alive with excitement, getting to their feet, aware that they are about to see something extraordinary, even greater than the dragon trick itself, created in tandem by a Far East adventurer and the greatest magician in the world.

“Appear dragon!” cries His Highness.

The band strikes up and suddenly a section of the floor of the basement begins to lift toward the stage, raising the famished dragon and Mrs. Nottingham with it. Part of the stage shifts back to allow the cage to rise. Sherlock, glued to a wall, stares up.

“You will get your prize onstage this time.” That’s what Nottingham had whispered to the dragon. “Yes, you can have it tonight!”

They are going to feed their philandering wife to the giant lizard on the stage of The Egyptian Hall! There will be blood, crunching of bones, screams, and an unparalleled sensation … gruesome reality at its finest, an illusion for the ages … but not
really
an illusion. There will be nothing left of her! And no evidence!

Sherlock has no weapon but his horsewhip. He races across the basement, falling into wooden boxes and picking himself up. He leaps onto the winding staircase at the other side of the room and flies upward toward the stage. When he arrives, he sees Hemsworth standing at stage left, Nottingham by the ropes with his axe in hand. The dragon is hissing, striving with all its might to get at its living meal. She is screaming underneath her gag. She knows what is about to happen.

“Your Highness?” shouts Nottingham and turns to his partner.

“Tonight,” intones Hemsworth on cue, “it shall not be as in days of old. No saint will save the lady. She shall be
devoured
!!!” His voice has grown evil.

An old man in a bizarre pink outfit, bent in the shape of a question mark, is rising to his feet in the tenth row to get to the stage.

There are two ship ropes. Nottingham rears back and slashes at the first. It doesn’t slice through.

Sherlock makes for him, but the Wizard’s second swing severs the rope and the dragon lunges forward. His human prey clings to the bars, just inches from the end of the flicking tongue. Nottingham’s back is to Holmes; he doesn’t see him. The magician moves away from the boy toward the other rope and gets a swing at it before Sherlock nears. Holmes won’t reach him before he makes his second swing! The beast will be loosed! It will kill and consume Mrs. Nottingham in front of The Egyptian Hall crowd! They are all now on their feet and most are applauding wildly, cheering on Nottingham and the dragon.

Holmes snaps his horsewhip from his sleeve and cracks it at the Wizard. His aim is off and the cord misses the axe … but wraps around Nottingham’s arm … 
the wrong arm
. Looking at the boy in surprise, the magician still has the presence of mind to bring the axe down on the rope with his free arm.
It severs
.

Sigerson Trismegistus Bell is well aware of what is reality and what is illusion at this moment. Over the last few minutes, his big brain has been processing many of the same things his assistant has been considering below the stage.
He, too, has calculated all that is planned to transpire in front of the audience as he races down the aisle and leaps onto the stage. Irene and Beatrice are behind him. Both young ladies, dresses and all, make the leap too.

The band stops playing, its members stare up at the scene in front of them.

Bell eyes both the big scimitar blade (hanging in midair — actually from a black cord — where it was left after the decapitation scene) and the little lock on the cage door in front of the terrified woman. He rips the sword from its cord and darts to the cage. Just as Nottingham severs the last rope, just as the huge lizard rushes for the woman, Bell brings the weapon down on the lock with tremendous force and smashes it apart. He opens the door in a flash, and pulls the woman out, saving her from the lunging lizard by inches.

The crowd erupts in thunderous cheers, rocking the theater.

But the famished reptile is still making for her. It has slithered over its ramp and gotten to the door with alarming speed. Now, it tries to burst through the tight space and out onto the stage. Its tongue goes through, then its head … but nothing else. It writhes in the doorway and hisses, potential human meals reflected in its shiny black eyes.

As Hemsworth and Nottingham look on in disbelief, the audience roars again with delight.

If it gets through, it will kill whomever it encounters!

But Sigerson Bell has had enough. He turns to the crowd, wielding his big gleaming blade over his head like a
crazed warrior. “Leave the building, you fools!” he shouts. “It is
real!
It is
REAL!
Run for your lives!”

The sight of this pink-clad madman, a terrified audience member like themselves, threatening the front rows with what is obviously more than a magician’s prop, causes the spectators within swinging distance to try to get away; even the musicians clamor out of the pit. Everyone stumbles toward the aisles. And when they get there, they keep on moving. Soon, the entire audience is panicking like a mob. There is pandemonium — women screaming, men shouting — and a rush for the exits.