“Il est mort,” one reporter said, “assassiné par Harold Silence—par le docteur Maison!”
“Est-ce que quelqu’un a dit mon nom?” came a voice from the doorway.
Watson glanced over to see a most unfortunate Dr. Maison standing at the threshold and smiling with curiosity that quickly turned to dread.
The reporters rushed him, yammering, and Dr. Maison fled into the hospital. Waving pencils and notepads, the journalists went for him like hounds after a fox.
When the last one vanished beyond the door, Watson stepped to Thomas’s bedside, extended a hand to him, and helped him stand. “I have a carriage waiting.”
“Let’s go, then.”
They could not go quickly, even after Watson took the heavy contraption that Thomas insisted on bringing along. Out the far door of the ward they went, finding their way through the rooms beyond. At last, they reached an exit and passed through it to climb into a waiting hansom.
Watson knocked on the roof of the coach, and the hatch popped open. “Take us to the Louvre, please, driver.” The hatch closed, and the carriage lurched into motion. Watson fixed Thomas with a steady stare. “That diversion was deftly done, my boy. You are a confidence man. It proves the truth of the old saying, ‘Better not make a friend of an actor.’”
Thomas replied with a smile, “I’ve always heard it the other way: ‘Better not make an enemy of one.’” Thomas produced a handkerchief and used it to wipe the blue pigment from his face.
“Your clothes are in the bag there.”
He lifted the stack of clothes from the corner, dragged off his hospital gown, and pulled a new shirt over his shoulders.
“So, what’s the rest of your plan—the plan for the Louvre?” Watson asked.
“It’s simple. I’ll be me and you’ll be you, and we’ll walk through the Louvre and wait for Silence to confront us. He’s there; I have no doubt.” Thomas pulled up his breeches and fastened them. “If he sees me, he’ll try to kill me. If he sees you—the famous Dr. Watson—he’ll size you up to decide why you’re there. Whoever is approached first should cough twice loudly, thereby signaling the other to give aid.”
“Give aid?” Watson asked. “How?”
“Knock him out.”
“With what?”
Thomas blinked, looking at his empty hands. “Well, see, I’ve got a left jab and a right hook. Did you bring either of those?”
“A pugilist, aye? I happen to have a haymaker that’s a legend in three counties. Nothing wrong with a good clean fight.”
Carnacki nodded. “Guns have turned fight into a dirty word.” He paused a moment and added hopefully, “You don’t happen to have a gun—”
“No such luck,” Watson replied, staring out at the Parisian apartments that rolled past. “Once he’s knocked out, then what?”
“Then we use this on him.” Thomas lifted the strange contraption he had carried beneath his arm. “Give me your bag.”
“My bag?” Watson said dully even as he surrendered it. Thomas took the bag, opened it, and dumped the surgical supplies on the seat beside them. “What are you doing?”
“Knives are useless against this man. Only this”—he pushed the contraption down through the mouth of the bag—“only this can stop him.”
Watson gingerly plucked his scalpels and clamps off that leather seat where hundreds of hindquarters—French hindquarters—sat daily, and slipped the implements into his coat pocket. “If you don’t mind my saying, this plan seems a bit ragged.”
Thomas gave a smile and slapped a hand on his comrade’s back. “I’m no Sherlock Holmes. My plans are a bit rough and ready.”
Beyond the cab windows, the great palace of the Louvre loomed up. Magnificent walls of stone held row on row of enormous windows.
As the hansom pulled to a stop, Watson said, “How will I recognize Harold Silence?”
“Ah, now, there’s the roughest part of my plan,” Carnacki allowed. “You see, Silence is a master of disguise, so it would be no good telling you what he looks like, because you would then know only the one man not to look for.”
“Sounds like my old friend Holmes,” Watson said offhandedly.
Thomas gave a startled look. He then lifted the medical bag and stepped out the hansom door. “Pay the cabby, would you?”
A graduate of the Baker Street Irregulars, indeed, thought Watson. After counting out the fare, Watson rushed down the pavement to catch up with Thomas at the entrance to the Louvre. He was just in time to pay a shilling and sixpence for each of them to enter.
Just beyond the ticket booth, a map on the wall displayed the layout of the museum.
“There are parallel galleries throughout this place,” Thomas said, pointing. “See here. I’ll start in Roman sculpture while you wander through Greek. At the end of each gallery, there’s a door that connects them. Each time you come to such a doorway, linger nearby until we can make visual contact. Then move on.”
“That sounds fine,” Watson said, “but let’s also pick a meeting spot a few galleries down.”
“Look here—this worn spot on the map, here in the middle of the Renaissance paintings …”
“What of it?”
“A hundred fingers tap that spot every day. That’s where the Mona Lisa must be. That’s the one painting we know Silence is after.”
Watson nodded. “Then let’s make our way toward the great lady.”
Thomas headed off into a gallery of Roman statuary, while Watson lost himself among the Greeks. It was a haunting feeling to wander among all those ancient figures carved by dead hands—all the while knowing that a killer stalked among them.
Watson reached the end of the first gallery and looked through the doorway but did not see Thomas. Pretending interest in a bust of Agamemnon, Watson waited until Thomas appeared. When he did, the coconspirators nodded ever so slightly to each other before moving along.
In the next gallery, Watson walked among medieval altar paintings, with their jewel tones and their gold-leaf halos—icons, emblems, codes in the clothing and in the posture. All of it spoke of Christ and his death and his power. At the end of that gallery, there was Thomas standing beyond the door.
Onward, then, through a hall of Renaissance paintings. Watson was mesmerized. Here was art through a different eye, through a modern, scientific eye. Every person in the paintings looked at something within the frame or beyond, and often the most important person looked at the viewer. So staggered was Watson by the masters’ works that he lost track of time, and when he arrived at the doorway between the galleries, Thomas was not there.
Perhaps Watson was ahead of him. He settled in beside the Raphael painting The Virgin in the Meadow. Mary was on a grassy field, apparently sitting on a hay bale, her red dress and blue robe framing the naked figure of the infant Jesus, who clutched a long thin staff. John the Baptist bowed before him. The composition was centered and balanced, the hues without hint of blackness, and the babe naked and unashamed. Raphael’s brushwork was so fine Watson could not make out a single stroke. He stepped up closer.
“Reculez s’il vous plaît,” said an old guard, moving up beside him.
Watson did not understand much French but did understand that he had gotten too close. “Pardonnez-moi.”
The old man smiled at Watson’s accent, but his own was just as thick when he switched to English. “Raphael was a genius, yes?”
“Yes,” Watson responded, shooting a look through the doorway and still seeing no sign of Thomas. “It all seems so balanced, so perfect.”
“Raphael had an eye for composition,” the old man said—for old he was, with white hair jutting from beneath his cap and wrinkles around his spectacled eyes and a white mustache and beard around his mouth. He rocked back on his heels, clasped his hands behind his back, and chuckled. “Yes, Raphael achieved the perfect balance in the end, but do you know that he sketched many versions to compose this one painting? He kept at it until he got it just right.”
He was nowhere to be seen, but Watson’s eyes did lock on a familiar face—one that he knew better than his own. The Mona Lisa hung nearby. It was not a large painting, not given a spot of any particular prominence, but those eyes that had burned their way through Leonardo’s mind would not let Watson look away. He wandered across the gallery toward the Mona Lisa and stood there before her and let her peer into him. What strange eyes, dipping into shadow at their corners, and what a strange smile, doing the same.
“Magnificent, no?” said a voice, and Watson startled, turning to see the old guard behind him. “The effect is called sfumato —hiding details in shadow. Da Vinci knew that whatever expression he might have given to her face would not be as satisfying as the expressions we would have given, so he left the key parts in shadow, left us to project on her what we wish to see—”
“Look, this is all very interesting, and I appreciate it, but I don’t have time—”
He quirked his eyebrows. “You’re in the Louvre, before the Mona Lisa, and you do not have time—?”
“I know. It sounds foolish. But … a friend … I was supposed to meet a friend here, and he’s not here. He’s long overdue.”
The guard tossed his old, narrow hands in the air and smiled. “Let me help. I can help. I’m a guard.” He pointed to the chevron piping on his coat sleeve. “What does your friend look like?”
Watson was not a fool. He knew that the guard may well have been Harold Silence. His friendliness, his chattiness, the way he lingered … the disappearance of Thomas—all of these clues told Watson to beware, but he still wasn’t certain enough to strike an old man. “He’s, uh”—Watson coughed twice loudly—“my friend is, well, young, British, with dark hair, a ratty trench coat.”
“Ah,” the guard said. “An art student.”
“Yes, an art student.” Watson pressed his hand into his coat pocket, feeling the scalpel there. At least he wasn’t defenseless. If this old man tried anything … He coughed twice more. “My friend … he liked the Mona Lisa most of all. Said he would meet me here—but I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Wait a moment,” the guard said as if in thought, “a young British art student with a thin mustache and goatee?”
“Yes.”
“Well”—the guard scratched his head—“you see, there was a young man like that taken to the infirmary. He couldn’t breathe—blood on his lips. Blood on his shirt, too, right here.” He touched his heart.
What if Thomas truly has collapsed? Watson wondered. In his condition, it’s not only possible, but also likely. “Where’s the infirmary?”
The guard crooked a finger above his shoulder. “Here, let me show you.” He turned his back and strode with a bandy-legged step down the middle of the gallery.
Watson followed, letting go of the scalpel. He couldn’t cut this man’s throat, even if he were Harold Silence. And Watson had brought a haymaker, after all. At the first sign …
“Through here,” the old man said, gesturing toward a door that read INFIRMARY. Nothing suspicious about that. But then he opened the door and stepped back and motioned Watson through. “After you.”
Watson shook his head. “You know the way.”
Shrugging, the guard stepped through the doorway. He and Watson descended a short flight of stairs, passed through a hallway, and came out into a long, low room. Cots lined one wall, and a doctor stood at a surgical table in the middle. On it lay Thomas, writhing beneath straps. Blood foamed on his lips and spattered his shirt and coat.
“Is that your friend?” the old guard asked.
“Yes.” Watson rushed past him to Thomas’s sickbed. “Out of the hospital, into the infirmary …”
Thomas looked up with imploring eyes and tried to speak, but he could only hack out a gobbet of blood.
Watson shook his head. “He shouldn’t be strapped down this way He can’t clear his airway” He grasped the great buckle that ran across Thomas’s chest and started to loosen it.
As he did, Thomas gasped a breath and sputtered, “Look out!” A shadow moved across his eyes, the shadow of a man’s fist.
Watson saw a flash of white light.
Then everything went dark.
As he crumpled to the floor, he heard a voice say, “Welcome to Paris, Dr. Watson.”
Then there was only silence.
48
REPENT OF HEAVEN
Here are the things I was banking on:
1. Watson and I would be irresistible bait for Holmes.
2. Either Watson or I could hold Holmes off in a fight until the other arrived.
3. We had the element of surprise, so Holmes would not be able to marshal his guards to swarm over us.
4. Holmes would not risk a public scene that might alert the police to his plans.
5. Holmes would attack with his wits rather than his fists.
I was wrong about every item except the first. I seemed to have forgotten, you see, that Holmes was not Holmes but a demon.
“So far so good,” I said as I stood among medieval paintings and spotted Watson in the adjacent gallery. He gave me a circumspect nod, his eyes level and serious. I returned the look and strolled onward
The next hall held Renaissance works. On the far side, patrons clustered around the Mona Lisa, though on the near side was an even more impressive masterwork: Michelangelo’s sculpture The Dying Slave. I approached the towering figure, nude and swooning in anguish, his flesh and muscle all supple and alive in white marble. I thought of the sculptor nearly four hundred years before, and of his model—and of both of them lying now in separate graves, both of them living still in this one figure. So rapt was my attention on the statue that I forgot for a moment about myself.
Something struck my heart.
Pain! I staggered back, groped at my chest, felt for the knife handle that must be jutting there—but no. It had just been a fist, one that knew where the wound was and smashed it and reopened it. Blood rose in my throat. God, the pain!
“Vous allez bien?” shouted a man, very near—too near.
As I collapsed to the floor, the man swooped down over me—a tall, thin man with white hair, mustache, and beard. His eyes glowed briefly red, and he smiled the smile of a barracuda. The demon Holmes spoke in a voice that gushed concern, “Vous saignez, monsieur.”
Of course I was bleeding, but the demon did not speak these words for my benefit. A museum patron had just then knelt down on the other side of me, and he asked, “Vous saignez, monsieur?”
I tried to tell the man what had happened, but I was gagging on blood.
The demon’s eyes had gone dark, and his grin had turned to a look of concern. “Je ne sais pas. Il s’est effondré tout à coup!”
The man pointed to the blood on my mouth. “Il saigne de la bouche!”
Nodding decisively, the demon pointed toward the infirmary door: “Aidez-moi à l‘amener à l’infirmerie!”
I spat blood and gasped a breath and tried to get up, but Holmes and the other man looped their arms under mine and hoisted me. I tried to protest, but already my throat had filled again, and I hacked it out across my shirt. I kicked to break free. “Il ne peut pas respirer!” said the other man.
“Vite! A l’infirmerie!”
Two more men arrived—guards dressed like Holmes—and the knowing look between them told me that these were his accomplices. They were burly, with stubbled chins and missing teeth, thugs that Holmes had somehow charmed into his service.
The demon said to the museum patron, “Nous prendrons soin de lui.”
The patron backed away, letting the guards take his position as they dragg
ed me down the gallery.
I struggled to get loose, but one of the thugs drove his knee into my side. I coughed more blood. Couldn’t Watson hear? The cough was our signal. I tried to cough again, but Holmes seized my throat, choking off the sound. Watson would never hear now. Part of me was glad. I didn’t want him to be doomed along with me.
The brutes lugged me to a doorway marked INFIRMARY, and the demon Holmes released my throat so I could hack a breath. He said to his henchmen, “Take him to the infirmary and strap him down. Make sure none of the personnel know. Only our people.”
“What then, boss? Kill him?”
“No. I’m going to finish him myself.” He lifted Watson’s black medical bag, dandled it a moment before my face, and handed it to one of the thugs.
“How long will you be?” the man asked.
“Only as long as it takes me to nab the other one,” Holmes replied, flashing his red eyes my way before turning and striding away.
The passage beyond was too small for two men to go abreast with me slung between, so one of the thugs stooped down and hoisted me over his shoulder. Blood shot from my mouth across his back, and I called out, “Help!” My cry was cut short as the man bashed my head against the wall.
The other thug slammed the door behind us. “Shut up, you!”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Boss says.”
“Don’t you know … who he is … what he is?”
The guard answered with a wicked smile. “He’s the boss.”
We descended a short set of stairs, passed through a hall, and ducked under a doorway. Beyond lay an infirmary with cots along the walls, medicine cabinets at one end, a human skeleton at the other, and a steel table in the center of it all. The man who carried me dumped me flat on my back on the table. I riled, gasping. The man grabbed my hands and held me down while his partner cinched wide leather bands down over my legs and waist and chest. Once the straps were in place, one man went off to secure the entrances and the other man dragged a doctor’s coat onto his shoulders. He stood above me, grinning.
The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls Page 26