The Secret Fiend (11 page)
Authors: Shane Peacock
“I am sorry, Beatrice,” cries Silver, “wery sorry. I was just tryin’ to scare you. I liked you so in school, but you’d never looks at me!”
“And you thought this would make me do so, John Silver?”
“I knows that some girls, they like the bad ’uns, the scary ’uns. I is big and strong, and I can handle meself. Lots of girls, they like that. I thought I’d scare you, then come back and offer to protect you. I thought maybe I’d tell you later that I was the Spring ’eeled Jack … maybe you’d … kind of like that too … maybe?”
“Then you don’t know a thing about me, Master Silver.”
The big lad, his face white with pain, drops his head and grips his arm, then looks up to Sherlock. “You’ve learned to fight, you ’as, ’olmes.”
It has been more than a year since Holmes last encountered John Silver, the former bully of Snowfields National School. He was the biggest boy there, and the most athletic, with muscles bulging through his soiled clothes, his feats in the little stone schoolyard extraordinary – he could leap like no one else. They had grappled once, on the cobblestone ground outside the school near the London Bridge Railway Station, Silver a full eleven stone in weight, pinning thin Sherlock down, spitting on him, slapping him in the face, calling him Judas the Jew, humiliating him in front of his classmates.
But that was long ago. And much has happened since.
“Yes, Silver, I have learned to defend myself. I have done quite well … for a Jew.”
“I am sorry, Sherlock. I didn’t means nuthin’ by it. I never did, really.” The big lad, now seventeen years old, begins to cry.
“You are a fool. But if Miss Leckie and Miss Louise will accept your apology, so shall I.” Beatrice and Louise nod. “I must tell you, however, that what you have been doing these last few days is against the laws of our nation, and your prank may have had more serious consequences than you imagined. Get to your feet!”
Silver struggles to his pins, gasping with pain, gingerly holding his broken right arm with his left.
“Last few days?”
“Close your mouth. I heard a police whistle at the moment I fractured your arm. I have no doubt that a Bobbie or two will be here in moments. I will stand just a short distance up the street, in the shadows. It is foggy enough now that they won’t see me. You will stay here, in this square with Miss Leckie and her friend. You shall not touch them, speak to them, or even look at them … I will watch you! When the police arrive, Miss Leckie will inform them that you attacked her, just as you did Miss Louise on Westminster Bridge, leaping down tonight from the roof of her father’s shop, but you fell and fractured your arm, and also sprained both your ankles, so badly that you could not escape. You shall admit to both of your assaults, the one on the bridge and the one tonight. As you see the Force
approach, you will pretend to be crawling away, your ankles injured. Lie down.”
“But it wasn’t me, Master ’olmes! I promise you. I just got dressed up tonight, first time! I reads about it in the paper … and I thought of doing it. It wasn’t me that first time on the bridge, nor the other time! I just did it tonight.”
“Sherlock,” says Beatrice, “perhaps ’e is telling the truth, perhaps –”
Sherlock steps toward Silver, a menacing look in his eyes. “Get down! Get down or I will crack your other arm the way I did the first!”
Silver immediately slumps to the cobblestones.
“Miss Beatrice is indeed a lovely lady, too lovely to be near the likes of you. She is kind and forgiving. But you sir, must feel the full force of the law against you, or you shall do something like this again. Take your medicine, sir, go to jail, contemplate your life … and change it!”
“But …”
“I will be in the shadows up the street … watching you.”
“Sherlock,” says Beatrice, “I will tell them what truly ’appened. I will tell them ’ow brave you were, ’ow –”
“If you care for me, Miss Leckie, you will say nothing of the kind. I have had it with seeking notoriety. It is enough for me that justice has been served tonight, that this fool is off the street. Perhaps there will be a day when I feel differently. Good night. I am glad that you are safe, and that your safety has been assured into the future.”
She glows at him. He fades into the fog and hides in a
doorway up the street. He must admit that it feels good to do it this way. In a sense, it makes him an even greater hero. But he shakes off that inflated notion.
Justice.
He has protected Beatrice the way he should have protected his mother, and Irene Doyle. That is what matters. Moments later, three Bobbies rush past, and Beatrice calls out to them.
Sherlock Holmes walks slowly back through Southwark and over Blackfriars Bridge toward Denmark Street. He feels strong and powerful on the dark footpaths, not fearful in the least.
I was wrong about the Jack being Crew, that’s true, but in the end, I found the villain.
He takes all the back arteries, the little lanes. The case of the Spring Heeled Jack … solved.
There are many ways that people get pleasure from life. Perhaps this is the way he will get his. Sherlock Holmes allows himself a grin.
IT STRIKES AGAIN“S
herlock!” exclaims Sigerson Bell as he rushes into the shop the next morning. “You’re name is in the newspaper!”
The boy had come home from Southwark exhausted, dropped into his little wardrobe, closed its doors, and fallen fast asleep, dozing soundly with nary a dream or a concern (a rare thing for him), completely satisfied with his night’s work – he had done the right thing in every respect. But the old man had thrown open his doors like something earth-shattering had to be announced. Sherlock rose up so suddenly that he slammed his head against the wardrobe ceiling.
“In the newspaper? Which one?”
“… In both of them, I am afraid.”
Afraid?
The shop receives two daily papers: the serious-minded
Daily Telegraph
and Bell’s gift to Sherlock, the sensational
News of the World
.
“And were I a wagering man, I would place great sums on the probability that your name is in every publication in London this morning.”
Sherlock had planned to have a sort of a victory chat with the old man this forenoon – laying out in detail his heroic actions and his solution to the
Mystery of the Return of the Spring Heeled Jack
. He hoped to have his explanation all finished and the apothecary’s deep admiration before he made his way to school. But this appearance in the morning publications more than gives him pause, as does Bell’s less-than-joyous attitude toward it.
“Let us have a look.” The boy reaches out for the paper.
“Perhaps after school?” Bell snatches it back.
After school?
Had Beatrice or Louise or maybe even John Silver not kept their word and informed the police, who had then informed the papers about his solution to this sensational crime? But if so … why isn’t Bell proud of him?
“Before you read the article – after school – let me congratulate you upon the arrest of at least one culprit representing himself as The Spring Heeled Jack!” Bell summons a huge smile and pats Sherlock violently on the shoulder. It is a rather poor piece of acting.
“One culprit? What do you mean by that, sir?”
The apothecary sighs. “Perhaps you should, indeed … read the article. It is on the first page.” He hands the paper to the boy and sits at the table, unable to face him.
Sherlock reads.
IT STRIKES AGAIN
The Spring Heeled Jack has struck once
more. This time in Knightsbridge, near the homes of several cabinet ministers. This attack was indeed a frightening one, the villain appearing out of nowhere and knocking a coachman unconscious before pulling two terrified ladies from the carriage, manhandling them, and sending them to the ground. Both fainted and the Jack was looming over them like a monster when Constables Balfour and Cummey, who had heard the ladies’ screams, came sailing up Piccadilly to aid them. The fiend, however, took one look at the men in blue and vanished, lighting onto a water pipe and ascending it like a monkey before gaining the rooftops and disappearing into the night. The Bobbies recall a man dressed somewhat like a bat, wearing a cape, with devilish ears, and having claws on his hands. He wore large black boots as well and seemed to possess great bounding ability. Upon recovery, the victims described the assailant as well-muscled and spoke of their hearts fluttering at very high rates and the perspiration on the villain’s face actually dripping onto their own. They reported too that he had fiery red-eyes and something blue emitted from his mouth as he cried out in a deep voice. He shouted the same thing to them as he wrote on a note he left behind, described in blood-red lettering.
“CHAOS!”
Sherlock can’t believe what he has just read.
Was it Crew? Or a new Jack?
But despite this surprising news, there really isn’t anything in it that Sigerson Bell wouldn’t want him to see. Is there? Bell doesn’t know yet that he caught Silver last night, doesn’t know that he thought he had this case solved. Or does he? The old man has his back to him, but he is a mind reader of extraordinary power. Somehow, he knows the boy has paused.
“Read on,” he says, waving his hand.
The boy turns back to the remaining paragraphs.
Curiously, an amateur imitator of the Jack was also accosted last night at about the same time the real one struck again in Knightsbridge. This was a mere boy named John Silver, who dressed himself in a Jack costume and attempted to frighten one of the young ladies who had been attacked by the real villain a few days past. Silver has revealed to the police that he knew her in school and had affection for her. In the course of the brief investigation, it was also discovered that a friend of the young lady’s, who had been following her too, came to her aid, breaking Silver’s arm.
Members of the Force were quickly on the scene, thinking at first that the genuine Jack had struck again. A red-faced Inspector Lestrade, who came rushing to this location from Knightsbridge, emerged from interviews in a
hatter’s shop nearby and, though usually tight-lipped about police matters, addressed reporters at length. He named the other boy who was in the school-boy scuffle – one Sherlock Holmes, a poor apothecary’s apprentice.
“This young brat, of Jewish origins, fancies himself an amateur sleuth, and has previously interfered with the Force. I doubt we will even charge Silver – he simply needs some stern attention to his derriere with a switch. There are too many amateurs about these days, both representing the villains and the side of justice. We will countenance no further interference. And I will assure the London public this … we will catch the true fiend and catch him soon.”
“I am sorry, my boy,” says Bell in a quiet voice.
But Sherlock isn’t feeling any sorrow for himself. He is simply seething. He is angry that he did not effectively keep his name from the news, and boiling about that ferret-faced Inspector, that buffoon who fancies himself a brilliant detective. And above and beyond everything, he is upset that he should have been in this situation in the first place. After having the good fortune to solve the Victoria Rathbone case, he had vowed that he would stay out of police work until he became a man, until he had worked diligently enough and long enough at his education, his fighting skills, his general maturity to face danger in the cause of justice, to truly help others wounded by villainy,
and actually begin the job of avenging his mother’s death. He had told himself that he would only enter the fray if a case sought him out and he had absolutely no choice but to pursue it. There had not been much probability of that.
Instead, he had allowed himself to get caught up in a little concern, a personal one, brought to him by a dark-eyed girl with a pretty smile and a deep admiration for him. He had been flattered into action … and look what had occurred, look what came of such
feelings
. He had been publicly humiliated, and his nemesis, that boob Lestrade, had been the agent of his embarrassment. On top of everything, a real fiend, a terribly dangerous one, veritably from the pages of the Penny Dreadfuls, is on the loose in London … and he hasn’t a clue who it is. The account in the paper frightens him: this “Spring Heeled Jack,” he is sure, will soon be murdering his victims. Beatrice, it seems, has been telling the truth all along.
