The Deadwood Stage

by Mike Hogan

  Crack!

  The sound of a revolver shot reverberated around and across the court.

  The crowd fell back; some ran. A man in a battered bowler crossed himself and cried, “It’s Spring-Heeled Jack!”

  Churchill ran, whooping and twirling, up the alley towards Brick Lane.

  “Quick,” said Holmes. “Now’s our chance.”

  I leapt back into the hall and slung the body over my shoulder. Churchill’s shirt and jacket lay on the floor and I threw them to Holmes. Wiggins led the way at the trot, slapping his cosh in his hand. I followed with the body. Holmes covered my back.

  “It’s not Spring-Heeled Jack,” I heard Holmes cry. “It’s his ghost come up from hell!

  Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

  Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,

  Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

  Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

  Thou comest in such a questionable shape

  That I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Winston Spencer-Churchill,

  Spring-heeled Jack!”

  We trotted along the alley towards the first court. I glimpsed Churchill ahead of Wiggins. He screeched, whooped, and capered wildly.

  Crack!

  Two shots, I thought. He has fired both barrels of his Derringer. I reached the first yard, empty now, and paused to catch my breath.

  “We must get on,” murmured Holmes. “They are recovering their wits.”

  In front of us, a group of armed men emerged from a doorway and blocked off our escape route to Brick Lane. I heard cries and the rustle of running feet, and a mob surged from the alley behind us.

  “Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdum,” muttered Holmes.

  Wiggins gave him an odd look.

  “He falls in Scylla’s jaws who would escape Charybdis, or out of the frying pan and into the fire,” I said. “I translate loosely.”

  “In here,” said Holmes. We backed into a dark doorway. I laid the body down again and checked the corridor behind us. It was clear.

  I joined Holmes and Wiggins outside. The mob of men advanced slowly towards us. They grinned, laughed and brandished their knives, clubs and blackjacks. Behind them, a crowd of woman egged them on with a horrible blackguardism that made me shudder to think that humankind could descend to such a level.

  I had a nauseating sense, in this festering, black, warren, of the depths of depravity to which humanity could sink. I saw how brutish that most noble piece of work, man, might become when his life were lived apart from the intellectual stimulus of art, music, books, travel, and the soft, health-giving influences of verdant fields and fragrant flowers. The brutish denizens of the rookeries were inured to filth and indecency. They lived in the absence of the gentle amenities: stimulating companionship, friendly intercourse with educated and cultured friends, and interesting enterprise; they had no experience of the pure and moral atmosphere of team sports -

  “Wake up, old chap,” said Holmes clasping my shoulder. He stepped forward and stood in the centre of the yard, his feet set wide and his top hat at a rakish angle, and stared at the mob with contempt. He grasped his walking stick in both hands and held it out before him. Our attackers watched wide-eyed as he slowly twisted the silver knob at the end of the stick and unhurriedly slid out a thin sword blade that gleamed in the weak light. He swished the sword into the salute.

  “Come, then,” he said.

  “Come: you but dally;

  I pray you, pass with your best violence;

  I am afeard you make a wanton of me.”

  I stood beside him on one side, Wiggins on the other. I held my stick high and cried my war cry.

  “Do his people like him extremely well?

  Or do they, whenever they can, rebel,

  OR PLOT,

  At the Akond of Swat?”

  Wiggins gave me another odd look.

  The crowd parted, and a short bald man stepped forward: Leather Apron. He hefted a long-handled single-bladed axe. He grinned at us.

  Holmes nodded to him and took up the en garde position.

  I heard a wild whoop and the sound of running feet came from the alley in the direction of Brick Lane. Churchill bounded out of the archway and skidded to a halt next to Holmes. Behind him, a group of tough-looking, heavy-built men stalked into the court. They carried weighty clubs and long, wicked-looking knives. They ranged behind one man who had his hands bandaged and strapped with strips of leather.

  “Evening, Mr Holmes,” he said.

  “Good evening, Bruiser,” said Holmes, sheathing his sword stick.

  Bruiser Bonner turned to the mob across the yard.

  “Nice evening,” he called to Leather Apron. “You out for a stroll or what?”

  Leather Apron walked into an open doorway without a word. The mob dispersed as suddenly as it had gathered.

  “I hear that you are against the Mayo Mauler,” said Holmes, offering Bruiser a cigar. “Should I have a guinea or two on you?”

  “The Fancy’s betting two to one on the Mauler, sir. Was I you, I’d go a few guineas at that price.”

  “I shall do so.”

  Blackmail

  We carried the young Negro man along Commercial Street to the bar of the Horn of Plenty. It was packed, but Bruiser cleared a place for us and I examined and cleaned the young man’s bruises and brought him around with smelling salts.

  “That’s Aaron,” said Wiggins. “Certain sure.”

  He was a handsome young man with the same light-brown complexion as the dead man. In the light, the resemblance between him and the corpse from the River was evident. I gave him a glass of brandy, and he began to come around. Churchill returned from a wash and brush up in the kitchen of the pub.

  “The hero of the hour,” I said, raising my glass.

  “Well done, Churchill,” said Holmes.

  “I just heard that Leather Apron’s a bleeding pork butcher,” said Wiggins. “You saved our bacon.”

  “What was that theatrical nonsense with your swordstick, Holmes?” I asked with a discreet wink at Wiggins and Churchill.

  “In war, moral power is to the physical, as three parts out of four,” he replied. “Who said that young man?”

  “Napoleon,” said Churchill. “I ran here to the Horn of Plenty. Mr Bonner recognised me immediately. He and his mates were eager to help.”

  The pub emptied as the bare-knuckle fight was announced. The Fancy was directed to a secret location farther up the street and assured that refreshments would be available at a special rate for the duration of the bout.

  Churchill and Wiggins went to see the fun. Aaron sat between Holmes and me, looking dazed and nervous.

  “You are Aaron Long,” said Holmes. “You are a friend of Bobby White Taylor. You were valet to Mr Maxwell P Taylor of the Cape Colony and Milwaukee, and you ran off with his son and his silver.”

  “I didn’t run off,” he said sullenly. “I was dismissed.”

  “You took the valuables.”

  “I helped Bobby take them. Anyway, I was owed back wages.”

  He spoke in a marked American accent.

  “Mr Taylor,” I said, “accuses you of persuading his son to run away.”

  “Bobby needed no persuasion to run.”

  “Tell us about it,” said Holmes. “We know that both Taylor and White are looking for you and for Bobby. We tracked you. So eventually will one of the men searching for you. We have most of the pieces in our hands. We want to find Bobby and help him.”

  “He needs no help from you.”

  Holmes stood.

  “It seems we have wasted our time and risked our lives for nothing, Watson. This young man scorns our help.”<
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  “The man in the apron,” I said. “He sold you out once and will again.”

  Aaron looked down at the table and shook his head.

  “Very well,” I said. “But you must visit the coroner, Doctor Purchase at 9, St Laurence, Pountney Hill, EC, to identify the body held there.”

  Aaron looked up startled.

  “The body of your brother,” said Holmes. “We believe that he was killed by Mr White.”

  I ordered another brandy for Aaron. Holmes sat again, and we waited.

  “Yep, it must be my brother, Joe. He went to see someone two days ago, on business.”

  The drink arrived and he gulped it.

  “What kind of business?” I asked.

  “Blackmail,” said Holmes quietly.

  Aaron looked up. “Looks like you know it all,” he said.

  “Tell us from the beginning,” said Holmes.

  Aaron explained that about seven years previously in Baltimore his mother had found a job as cook for a rich foreigner, Mr Taylor. She had moved into his house, and taken Aaron, then fifteen, with her.

  “What about your brother?” asked Holmes. “Did he live with you?”

  “No, my ma threw him out before that. She said he was a bad ‘un. He ran with a wharf gang. He got picked up and jailed for robbing a warehouse and blackjacking the guard.”

  Holmes nodded.

  Aaron said that Mr Taylor had given him a job as valet, but his real job was looking after Bobby. Mr Taylor wanted his son to grow up like a gentleman. He hired private tutors, and he wouldn’t let the boy out of the house except to ride by the lake with his riding master. Aaron was fifteen and Bobby six, but Aaron had been Bobby’s only friend. Aaron would smuggle him out to a theatre show, or a baseball game, or just to play softball on the street.

  “Mr Taylor would get mad if he found out and he would beat us, but mostly he didn’t catch us. Bobby is like a kid brother to me.”

  I nodded. “Go on.”

  He shrugged.

  “Everything was all right until about two years ago. Then Mr Taylor went crazy. He put new locks on the house. He hid guns in every room and drank more than he had before. He was half-drunk most of the time, cussing us out and laying into me. His craziness was connected to letters that arrived from Southern Africa. When I brought him one in the post he would go wild.”

  “You moved to Wisconsin,” said Holmes.

  “Yeah, to Milwaukee, all of a sudden, and in winter. The furniture had to follow by train. We set up in a grand house, and things went on as before. Then, another letter arrived, this time from New York, and Mr Taylor went loco again. One evening, as I sat in a whisky joint on the lakeshore, my brother Joe sat next to me. He said he’d just got out of prison and he had tracked us from Baltimore. He’d been to see Ma, but she wouldn’t talk to him. She wouldn’t open the kitchen door.

  “He said that if he could talk to her face to face he would make things right. Joe was my older brother. When I was a kid he was my hero, like Bobby and me, so I said I’d help.”

  Aaron explained that they got back to Mr Taylor’s house too late to see their mother. They were drunk. He found a place for Joe to stay in the attic and he went to bed.

  The next day the house was in an uproar. Several valuable items, including Mr Taylor’s watch and over a hundred dollars in cash had been stolen from his bedroom. The thief had also rifled his papers.

  “My mother and me knew for certain sure that it was Joe, but what could I do? I hoped he would go away and not bother us again.”

  He shook his head.

  Aaron explained that he had been in the same bar as before a few days later when Joe had walked in again. He didn’t deny that he was the thief. On the night of the theft, Mr Taylor had been out drinking until late so Joe had plenty of time to examine the documents in his desk. He had read threatening letters from Mr White in Cape Town that told the story of the fight at the gold diggings and that that Bobby was not Mr Taylor’s son. Joe planned to blackmail Mr Taylor; he would threaten to tell the story to Bobby and the police. He wanted Aaron to come in with him.

  “I said I wouldn’t, but Joe said he’d tell Mr Taylor that he and I did the theft if I didn’t go along.”

  “So, your brother blackmailed you and Taylor,” I said.

  Aaron shook his head.

  “When I got home, the house was again in a racket. We were to sail to England on a liner from New York in three days. I was glad. I thought that we would be rid of Joe. Ma thought so too.”

  Aaron described their arrival in Liverpool and the setting up of their house in London.

  “We were all homesick after a couple of months, except for Mr Taylor. Bobby was wild to go back to America. He didn’t understand all these moves and why he was kept like a prisoner. He went crazy when Mr Taylor told him he was putting him to an English school.”

  Aaron laughed.

  “He poked the old geezer at one school in the nose and kicked another in the bawbles.”

  He grew serious again.

  “Then the letter from Joe arrived, postmarked in Liverpool the day before. I had been in London since we arrived, but Mr Taylor figured me as the blackmailer. He compared my writing to the handwriting of the letter and naturally, it was similar. He didn’t know anything about Joe, so he blamed me. He threw me out. He said if he saw me again, or heard that I had contacted Bobby, he would hunt me down like a dog. I knew that he would too.”

  “Bobby went with you?”

  “He did not.”

  Aaron explained that Taylor had locked Bobby in his room for a week, then let him out, but kept him indoors. They could communicate through a kitchen window left open by Aaron’s mother. Aaron told Bobby about White, and the next day the boy had run. He had taken clothes and valuables. They had wandered across the River in search of lodgings and fallen into the hands of Wiggins and his pals.

  “They were main good to us, sirs,” he said. “We ran because we heard that a man was on our trail, asking for us in Lambeth and offering a reward. We hopped it to Whitechapel.”

  “How did your brother find you?” asked Holmes.

  “I went to see my ma. I would meet her at a pub near Mr Taylor’s house. He bushwhacked me as I left.”

  “How did Joe know Taylor’s address?” I asked. “He sent a letter there from Liverpool. And how -”

  “He found correspondence between Taylor and the house agent in London in Taylor’s bureau,” Holmes said. “And he obtained money from White by telling him that he could contact Bobby and persuade him to run to him. He bought his steamer ticket with that money. Is that right, Aaron?”

  “Exact, sir.”

  “Your brother visited White in Limehouse to squeeze him,” said Holmes. “But White knew by that time of Bobby disappearance. He killed Joe out of hand.”

  Aaron put his head in his arms and rocked back and forth.

  “He and Taylor both think that you know where Bobby is. Do you?” Holmes asked softly.

  “Bobby ran when I brought Joe to our lodgings in Whitechapel. He guessed that he would turn him in to Taylor or White, whoever would pay the most. He said that he would never go with either of the cowards. I have no idea where he is.”

  “Cowards? Not murderers or attempted murderers,” I said. “An odd choice of words.”

  “Do you know where Bobby is?” Holmes asked again.

  Aaron shook his head. “I searched, but I couldn’t find him. Maybe he has gone back to America. That’s all he wants to do.”

  Holmes sat back and dismissed Aaron with a curt nod. He slipped away.

  I checked my watch.

  “We are far, far too late for tea with Miss Caspar.”

  11. A Certain Spectacle

  A Noble Scar

  Wig
gins and Churchill came through the door with a crowd of disgruntled punters.

  “The Mayo Mauler by a knockout in twenty-two minutes, eight seconds,” said Wiggins. “The Fancy is disappointed, Mr Holmes. They expected a fearful spectacle of pugilistic delight. There’s talk of fight fixing and dark deeds. Time we was off.”

  “Watson, give me five sovereigns, will you?”

  I took the coins from the meagre collection in my waistcoat pocket and counted them out.

  “You know, Holmes, our finances -”

  He scooped the money up and gave it to Wiggins.

  “Bruiser,” he said. “To ease his injured pride.”

  I could hardly complain. Wiggins disappeared outside.

  “How are you for the ready?” Holmes asked Aaron.

  He shrugged. “All right. We do the street fakements, and we’ve another dodge or two on.”

  “The canary dyer’s pay roll,” said Holmes.

  Aaron looked at Holmes in astonishment.

  “You worked there for a while recently to eye the ken and cool the security arrangements on payday,” Holmes said. “I would bet that your brother took over on the day he died. Were you ill?”

  “On a lead for Bobby,” said Aaron “Turned out to be a false trail.”

  “You went back to the factory to collect your back-pay.”

  Aaron nodded.

  Holmes stood. “I would advise you to hide yourself somewhere until Bobby is found. I would suggest the docks; you would not stand out there. Better still, work your return to America and turn your back on this foul affair. It has cost the life of your brother. Do not trust Leather Apron.”

  Aaron nodded again. We shook hands and he slipped away.

  We four musketeers climbed into a four-wheeler and drove away from Whitechapel, not without, for me at least, a sense of considerable relief.

  “A near-run thing, Holmes,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I turned to Churchill. “You owe me an explanation, young man.”