The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (13 page)

‘It is he!’

The next instant a figure passed swiftly by our
hiding-place
. It was too dark for me to make out anything of his features, but by the same token Holmes and I escaped his notice. He crossed the road obliquely and disappeared into the street opposite without for a moment slackening his pace. As soon as he was out of sight, Holmes grasped my shoulders urgently.

‘There’s no time to lose!’ he hissed. ‘I will keep him in sight. Do you return to the station and alert Lestrade. He has his orders. But for God’s sake hurry!’

With that he was gone. I am by no means clear about what happened next. The facts are plain enough – as I turned away to do Holmes’s bidding my foot landed on
the edge of the step on which we had been standing, wrenching my wounded ankle. The pain, though brief, was intense. When it passed I set off with all the speed I could muster. But instead of making for the police station, I went after Holmes and Moriarty. My decision deliberately to ignore the orders I had been given was completely spontaneous, and I would be hard put either to justify or explain it. Perhaps I had simply been deceived too many times lately by Holmes’s stratagems, and had grown suspicious. At all events, my only thought now was to stick by my friend, whatever he was about. Moriarty might indeed be the devil incarnate, but I had no doubt he would stop a revolver bullet the same as any other man.

At Holmes’s suggestion I had equipped myself with a pair of rubber-soled tennis shoes, and mine was thus a soundless progress along the dreary streets. I kept my eyes fixed on the pavement before me. My wound still throbbed uncomfortably, and another such mishap would incapacitate me for several minutes at least. As I reached the next corner I glanced up, only to find that Holmes had vanished from sight. Moriarty I could just make out as he passed beneath a lamp, walking straight ahead towards Bishopsgate. To my right rose the walls of the market. Looking to my left, I was astonished to see Holmes’s tall figure hurrying towards the next street. Even as I watched he turned the corner, so that he was now headed back in the direction we had come. Utterly mystified, I hastened after him. The street, however, once I reached it, proved to be empty but for three vagrants perched on the kerb swilling beer from a can. I tried to collect my scattered wits. Even at a run, Holmes could not have gained Commercial Street again before I rounded the corner. He must therefore have entered one of the houses or courtyards in the street. But which one? And for what reason?

I had got myself into a fine mess with my brave initiative. Moriarty was lost to us, and now Holmes too had disappeared. For my part, I was faced with the choice of waiting there in the hope that Holmes might reappear, or returning contritely to the police station and enduring Lestrade’s sarcasms. The latter prospect was sufficient to induce me to stay. I found a deeply recessed doorway in which to conceal myself, and crouched down there. It was a relief to take the weight off my leg, and my refuge was out of the wind. For a minute or two I sat there quite content. Then a very unpleasant thought struck me. What if Holmes had perceived that he was being followed? Would he not naturally assume that his pursuer was one of Moriarty’s accomplices? Might he not slip down to the next street, enter a house, pass over the wall into the adjoining property, and thence regain the other street in safety, leaving the professor’s ruffian to mark down an empty house? It seemed exactly the style of thing Holmes would be likely to do, whereas to abandon the chase for no apparent reason was utterly foreign to his nature. I had virtually convinced myself that this was indeed the true state of affairs, when I heard a door shut close by. I peered out. Some three or four houses back, a man had stepped out on to the pavement. I quickly pulled my head in again as he turned towards me. His soft footfall neared. There was a lodging-house adjacent, and as he passed his face caught the light from its lamp. I almost gave the game away then and there by my sharp intake of breath. The face was familiar. The man was Holmes.

The face was familiar and yet quite strange. Had I not been half-expecting to see my friend, I doubt I would have known him. He was a master of disguise, of course, but this one, like all great inspirations, was simplicity itself. He had darkened his complexion slightly, and added a fine moustache, curled at the tips. The effect was
to give his face a distinctly Semitic appearance. This was accentuated by his dress, which might best be described as elegantly sumptuous. He wore a dark felt hat and a long fur-trimmed coat, beneath which I caught sight of a white collar and black tie retained from his original costume. He had a pair of kid gloves in one hand and a small package in the other, and carried himself in such a way as to appear a good six inches shorter than his full height. The general impression was of a prosperous man of commerce, ‘something in the City’, whose tastes still smacked of the bazaars and counting-houses from which his forefathers had come. It was a truly masterful impersonation, for he had not tried to impose alien features on his own by dint of trickery. Rather, with a few deft touches, he had exposed an alien Holmes, one I had never before seen, but who now seemed to have been there all the while in that face I had come to think of as so characteristically and essentially British.

This instant of recognition was succeeded by an acute sensation of doubt as to my own position. My natural impulse was to run after Holmes, confess my
wrong-headedness
, and throw myself on his mercy. I quickly thought better of this, however. These were deep waters, and it was by no means certain that Holmes would welcome my presence in them. On the other hand, I could hardly go off and abandon him. What if the message I was to have given Lestrade formed a vital element in his calculations? He had spoken of these unpatrolled streets as ‘the open door of the trap’. Had my message been the signal to close that door? I began to appreciate how horribly short-sighted my insubordination had been. Had Holmes not praised me for my soldierly dependability, for my readiness to follow orders without question? What a hideous irony it would be if my failure in that respect proved his undoing! But it was too late now for second thoughts. All I could do was to follow my friend
discreetly
, 
and stand ready to lend such aid as I could if the need arose.

Holmes was evidently in no hurry now, and I was able to keep pace with him quite easily. Before we had gone very far, however, it occurred to me that my very presence, even at a distance, might constitute a danger. Our association was well known to Moriarty, as was my appearance. Holmes had disguised himself to perfection, but what about me? I decided to attempt a little elementary camouflage. I pulled off my coat, turned it inside out, and put it on again. I then removed my necktie, placed it in my hat, and threw both over a wall. This was good, but it needed some finishing touch. I walked nearer to the kerb and pretended to slip, precipitating myself into the gutter. I then rolled from side to side, distributing the mud about my person, before rising unsteadily. To complete the picture I rubbed a handful of dirt down my face. The cold night resounded with peals of laughter from the trio of inebriates. I ignored them and resumed my progress with some pride in my ability to emulate Holmes’s methods. No one now, I thought, would stop to question that I had merely started to celebrate the Lord Mayor’s accession a little early.

The rain, which came and went all night, had largely emptied the streets. The bleak buildings rose up on either side as sheer and forbidding as cliffs of basalt. We might have been lost in some monstrous abyss through which the wind gusted and howled with the primal force of a mountain torrent. The guttering lamps provided just enough illumination to make the desolation of the scene fully apparent. On and on we walked through the streets we had earlier patrolled side by side. Holmes kept moving steadily ahead, never pausing in his stride, never looking back. I kept to the opposite pavement and hung back at every corner, but clearly my friend had no inkling that he was being followed.

We seemed to have been walking for an hour or more when we encountered the man and the girl. My wound was by this time giving me considerable pain, and it was only with difficulty that I was able to maintain Holmes’s pace, moderate though this was. I was in fact wondering how much longer I would be able to keep up this relentless march, when all at once the situation changed dramatically. The first thing I noticed was that Holmes had stopped at a street corner. A moment later a man passed by in the cross-street. He was somewhat stout, and was shabbily dressed, with a ‘wide-awake’ hat. I did not remark him particularly, for we had passed and been passed by many persons in the course of our promenade. Holmes stopped at the corner for a minute or two, and then turned to the right and disappeared. I hastened to reach the corner, and there beheld a strange scene. Walking towards Holmes was a young woman dressed in a dark skirt and a shawl. She was evidently a prostitute, although rather younger and more attractive than most specimens of that class we had encountered. She seemed a little the worse for drink, and her gait was unsteady. As she came up to Holmes I was astonished to see my friend place his hand upon her shoulder in familiar fashion. He then made some remark at which they both laughed. All this was indeed a cause for wonder, but my attention was drawn elsewhere, for a little further along the street I spied the man who had passed by a minute earlier. This disreputable-looking individual had stationed himself under the lamp of a public house, from which vantage point he was keeping a surreptitious eye on my friend and the young woman. Suddenly the affair began to assume a distinctly sinister aspect. Was it indeed by sheer coincidence that the man and the girl had happened to pass one another at this spot? Why had the man remained? Why was he showing such a marked interest, in a district where indifference was a cardinal virtue, in
matters that were none of his business? Even as these thoughts were running through my head, Holmes and the young woman moved off together. As they passed by the watcher under the lamp I saw him look closely at Holmes, as if to make sure of his man. Then, as the couple turned the corner, he left his post to follow them.

I now had no further doubts. The man and the girl were clearly accomplices of Moriarty. Her task must be to lure Holmes to a suitably secluded spot where the man could strike him down. What a hideous accomplishment if this fell plan were to succeed! How Moriarty would gloat! What a brilliant exclamation mark to set to his gory monogram! But the game was not yet lost. The Professor’s henchman had not observed my presence in the shadows, and while he stalked Holmes, I in turn marked him down. I was armed and ready, and my intervention would be all the more effective for being unexpected. Thus, in solemn procession, we passed through the gloomy corridors of Whitechapel. In the van was Holmes with the young woman, unaware that twenty yards back the stout man was skulking along on his trail, while the latter was in turn blissfully ignorant that bringing up the rear was one whose head was clear – despite appearances to the contrary – and whose untrembling fingers grasped the trigger of a loaded revolver. In this fashion we returned to the same squalid street from which I had followed Holmes in the first place. He and the girl came to rest at an archway between two houses. The stout man also stopped. On the other side of the street I stepped into a gateway from which I was able to command an excellent view of the proceedings. To anyone acquainted with the character of Sherlock Holmes, these were quite startling. The woman stood up against the arch, addressing him in the vulgar and piercing tone of her ilk. It was my friend’s response which astonished me. His words were inaudible, but I plainly saw him lean forward and kiss the
woman’s face! They continued to converse together for a minute or two, before going in under the arch together. At once the stout man shook off his lethargy and marched boldly up to the archway. He looked into the passage, then he too vanished from sight.

Here, then, was the crisis! The girl had somehow induced Holmes to enter a dark alley, where the stout man was now about to assault him – no doubt striking the first blow while my friend’s back was turned. There was not a moment to lose! I made for that archway with all the speed I could muster, given the state of my throbbing Achilles’ tendon. But in the event it was as well I was not swifter, for as I was on the point of entering the passage I caught the sound of someone coming out. No sooner had I flattened myself in the doorway of the adjacent house than the stout man reappeared! He looked briefly up and down the street, and then proceeded to cross over to the lodging-house opposite, beneath whose lamp he took up his position as before.

I now had to revise my ideas. Evidently the ruffian was not himself going to attempt Holmes’s life. His job was merely to keep watch, pending the arrival of some third party. It was no extraordinary feat of deduction to conclude that this would prove to be none other than Moriarty himself. The Professor was coming to settle accounts in person with his arch-enemy. Of course! It was absurd to think that at this supreme climax to the most audacious series of killings in history Moriarty would permit another the privilege of striking the fatal blow! He would come himself! He must come! This being the case, it only remained for me to gain entrance to the passage and warn Holmes of the danger in which he stood, and we might yet turn the tables on this inhuman genius. But how was I to get by the watchdog? For a moment I thought of simply drawing my revolver and taking the man in charge, but it soon occurred to me that it would not do for
Moriarty to see that his Cerberus was missing. That would alert his suspicions, and he might make good his escape. How was I to manage it? I turned the question over in my mind without arriving at any conclusion. In the end, chance smoothed the way for me. A man came down the street and turned into the lodging-house. As he did so he caught sight of the stout man, with whom he was evidently acquainted. The two fell into conversation, in the course of which my adversary turned away, allowing me to slip from cover and enter the narrow vaulted passage. Once inside, the darkness wrapped me in a cloak of invisibility.