The Secret Fiend (10 page)

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

P
erhaps 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 sees 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.