“Ah, I see you have regained your appetite, Master Holmes.” Sherlock is seated on his bed, the bowl of porridge on his knees, spoon in hand, apparently partway through his meal.
Every time the jailer rises to pace that morning, Sherlock turns like a cat to his two splats of porridge next to the wall. Within half an hour, he has made his very own porridge key. He finishes just in time. The paste has almost hardened into its infamous rock-like consistency.
The Bow Street jailers are certainly not supposed to sleep on duty. But Sherlock knows they sometimes do. Frightened and unable to settle in, he has awakened several times the last few nights, and each time has made an observation: his night watchman, sitting on the chair down the hall, has a habit of nodding off at about four o’clock in the morning. The boy knows the hour by the position of the moon, which he can see through one of the little hall windows, that looks out into the courtyard.
He watches the moon through his bars. The crude key, modeled on an equally crude one that is meant for a very roomy lock, is clutched in his hand. It is as hard as a cricket bat.
Sure enough, at about four o’clock, the jailer’s chin goes down onto his chest. He is a veteran who can likely rouse himself from slumber at the scratch of a rat.
Sherlock inserts the key.
He tries to turn it. The lock creaks. The turnkey stirs.
“Prudence, I drank but one mug of beer, I swear …” he mutters, never opening his eyes, his mouth munching as if he were tasting something. He drifts off again.
The boy is frozen in place beside the keyhole. He waits. But not too long: the jailers’ naps are always short.
The key is still in the lock. He tries to turn it. It won’t budge. Maybe his key isn’t sturdy enough. He tries again. This time he holds it directly in the center of the lock so it will push the bolt perfectly and turns it very slowly praying it won’t snap. But he can feel his porridge-iron tool beginning to crack. He pulls it out and tries one more time, twisting even more gingerly. Slowly … it turns.
He’s unlocked the cell!
Now he has to open the door. It squeaks every time the jailers move it.
Sherlock begins pushing the door gently. Every few seconds it creaks and the turnkey stirs, but soon he’s opened it enough to slip out. He slides into the hallway. He can’t believe it. His heart is pounding. He moves toward the main door, but then stops.
Mohammad.
When he sneaks to the next cell, he is shocked to see the Arab looking back at him, wide awake, standing right at the bars. There is a different look in the man’s eyes in the darkness. They appear calculating. The accused man doesn’t seem so young anymore.
The jailer stirs again.
The two prisoners stare at each other for several breaths. How does Sherlock know for sure that Mohammad Adalji is telling the truth? He is almost certain, but not absolutely. Not yet. He turns … and tiptoes away. The Arab nearly reaches out to grab him. For an instant, it seems like he might shout. But he holds himself back, anger burning in his face.
In a heartbeat, silent as a ghost, Sherlock moves up the steps, through the door at the end of the hallway, barely opens it, and slides through. He finds himself in the reception room of the front office. Looking ahead and to his right he sees a small desk and then a large, wooden one farther away. No one is at the first, but a night sergeant sits at the second. Sherlock is slightly behind him. The man’s head is down. He’s writing in his books, dipping his pen in an ink bottle. The boy drops to the floor and advances to the smaller desk, crouching behind it, out of sight. His breathing sounds as loud to him as the bellows the old hatter uses when he lights his fireplace. He tries to calm himself. The policeman is five yards away. Sherlock starts sorting through the photographs his mind took of the front part of the Bow Street Divisional Police Station when he was brought in a week ago. He knows that the London evening and freedom are to his left, through an open archway in this room, and then about six steps across the waiting room and out the big, black front doors. But the night sergeant, whom he can’t entirely see, can spot anyone who goes in or out.
He peeks around the desk and looks through the arch way where he spies a Bobbie sitting on one of the benches in the front room.
He’ll have to make a run for it. But the element of surprise will be in his favor. He’ll use his street smarts and get past the sergeant in a flash. There is really only one policeman to elude. When he gets to the other room, he will know exactly where to find the front doors and their latch.
Then a noise comes from behind.
“What in the name of –” a voice exclaims. It is the old jailer, who has roused from his sleep to find an empty cell.
Sherlock leaps to his feet.
Run!
He makes for the open archway, the jailer in hot pursuit, darting through the room in an instant. He figures the Bobbie on the bench in the outer room will rise to stop him, so he goes low, like a rugby athlete below a scrum. Down he goes, under the Peeler’s grasp and out into that waiting room. There are the doors. But suddenly policemen are materializing out of walls! Three more Bobbies are on their feet – all had been lounging on other benches, hidden from his view.
But he was right: he has the element of surprise. Speed is what matters. Only one policeman, close to the doors, has a chance to collar him. The man dives at him. He ducks again and the Bobbie flies over him, catching part of his black frock coat in a hand. The boy wrenches himself free and flings a big door open. In a second he is fleeing down the stone steps, past the wrought-iron gates and round blue lamps, and into the night.
That strangeness is in the streets again: that eerie opera of bizarre people and criminals who come out in the dark. Sherlock races through this nightmare, the Force on his trail. He hears the violins again, playing frantically. The fog hangs thick tonight.
The last thing he did as he lay awake in the dark was make a plan for what he would do if he made it outside. He thought of every possible situation, all the way from the best … to the one he is in now, with Bobbies in close pursuit. He can’t go home; he can’t outrun the police; he can’t hide for long because no one will hide him … except maybe a criminal, one who lives on the streets, who knows how to avoid the authorities, who might in some twisted way, feel there is something to gain by helping him.
Malefactor! Where are you?
He races across Bow Street, west into Covent Garden, running past the gas-lit Opera House without even giving it a glance. He never won a single race in school, but that was because he hadn’t cared. When he cares, he can do nearly anything. His legs are thin and long like a greyhound’s.
He turns north and up toward the narrower streets, places he knows Malefactor frequents with his Irregulars. His boots hammer on the cobblestones. Rain drizzles down again. He hears the sound of his own explosive breathing.
Where are they?
He has no good reason to believe that the boy criminal will help him. It’s just a feeling, an intuition of the sort that he often has about that nefarious street knave: that something about this situation will appeal to him, that he and Malefactor have some indefinable attachment. His enemy may just save him in order to hound him.
They often stay near here. Somewhere.
As he flies, he glances down every alleyway. Nothing. The police are shouting behind him, their voices echoing in the dim, fog-filled streets. He scrambles west, past closed taverns and black shop windows, and then up a narrow street to the north. In seconds it becomes even narrower. Then he realizes where he is … in The Seven Dials. He has never dared to come here before, to this intersection of seven little streets in the heart of London: an infamous part of the rotting core, known for its abject poverty, its violence – and as a haunt of thieves. But this is where he has to be. This is where Malefactor can be found.
The police are getting closer, their boots pounding louder in pursuit. At the intersection, he selects a street and runs into that dark artery. It is a canyon of broken-down three
-storey buildings. Several half-clothed people lie on the narrow foot pavements and out onto the road. He flashes past tight little passageways jutting off from the street, where only the human sewer rats of London go. Skidding past one, he notices some movement in the darkness.
Irregulars?
It would make sense. The little alley bulges out into a tiny court and then narrows again on the other side. It is a perfect place for them to sleep. He vanishes into the passage, heading for the shadows. Even now, in his desperate situation, this frightens him to his boots. He’s never slithered into a hole like this.
A human head is slowly lifting and facing him through the fog. Then a whole torso rises. Sherlock comes to a sudden halt. There are bodies lying everywhere. The torso is long and thin.
“Master Holmes, I perceive.”
He doesn’t even sound sleepy. All around their leader, the Irregulars are lying in heaps, snoring loudly.
“Malefactor!”
“Troubles, young sir?” His yellowing teeth are dimly evident in the dark. He looks pleased.
“They’re after me.”
“Heard you’d been for a visit at the Bow. Escaped have we?”
There is a tinge of admiration in his voice.
“They’re after me!”
Malefactor glances down the passageway behind Sherlock. The first policeman has arrived. He is peering in, hesitating despite the nearness of his prey
“This way!” exclaims Malefactor, shoving Sherlock past him. “Go east, then north. Vanish!”
Sherlock doesn’t need to hear more. He struggles to pass Malefactor, stepping on Irregulars. They groan and swear and begin to rise.
“Let him through!” hisses their boss. “I’ll expect a report! Some information!”
Sherlock is gone, out the other end of the alley. Malefactor turns to face the policemen coming their way.
“Irregulars! Stand up and stay standing! I want a delay of at least a minute for Master Holmes this evening. These crushers have nothing on us, can’t nick us for standing in a walkway.”
The police collide with the Irregulars. Heated curses come from the deeper voices, earnest apologies from the younger. But somehow, despite apparent attempts on the part of the Irregulars to get out of the way, they seem to keep placing themselves directly in front of the Bobbies. It is nearly a minute before they get to the end of the passage. When they look out onto the street beyond, the boy has vanished.
His father has taught him to listen to experts, so he does as Malefactor says. If the boy criminal says to go east then north, then east and north he will go. There’s another reason, a very good one, to flee in that direction.
He zigzags as he flies, until he reaches the trees on beautiful Bloomsbury Square. He’s entering an area where the police would not expect him to be. The British Museum, that wonderful depository of information, is down the street to his left; farther ahead stands the University College of London, where his father’s dreams once seemed possible.
He is nearly out of breath. He hasn’t heard or seen the Bobbies for several minutes. It is time to walk. He won’t look as suspicious this way either.
This is a very different neighborhood from his own. It’s where the educated reside: professors, philanthropists, and where he can find … Irene.
Yes. North and east has been the perfect direction, fitting into the last part of his escape plan.
Irene and her father live somewhere near here. Montague Street: that’s what she said. The avenue he is now on is well lit with tall, black iron gas lamps – all the wealthy areas are. He walks north to the end of the foot pavement and looks up at the name imprinted on the last building. Bedford Place. He is close; he knows it. He is at the south end of another park. He turns left toward the Museum, massive and made of gray stone with Roman pillars, rising on the west side of … Montague.
Irene is asleep somewhere on this street.
He prowls along the footpath, examining the houses. They are all in a row, all attached, narrow, but three-and-a-half storeys high, with cream-colored ground floors and brown brick or white stone on the upper levels. Bright flowers grow in window boxes. Numbers aren’t posted on all the houses, but some have business and family names.
He keeps reading, squinting from the street, not daring to go close to the front doors. Shiny, black iron fences guard each residence; a few stone steps lead up to the entrances, servants’ quarters are below. When he is all the way down the street, across from the Museum, he stops near a brick home. It has a brass plaque. He squints: “Society … of … Visiting … Friends….”
He’s found her.
But now what? He can’t just walk up the steps and knock. Mr. Doyle would immediately return him to jail.
He looks in both directions. No one is on the street. The Doyles’ house is attached to the dwelling to its north, but it is at the end of the row where a little passage about two feet wide cuts through to the back of the property. An iron gate stretches across it. He crouches down and moves toward it. The gate opens easily. He inches along the passage and soon finds himself next to a walled backyard the width of the house and about eight feet long. Through an entrance in the wall he can see that a good part of the small yard is filled with a little house … made for a dog.
Oh-oh!
Frantic, he returns to the passage. He faces the yard as he moves backward, ready for an attack or furious barking. But there is nothing. That is curious. The dog hasn’t noticed him. Could it be asleep? Is it ancient and hard of hearing? He spots its chain, lying on the bricks on the ground, and stops. It isn’t attached to anything.
A minute later he is lying in the empty dog kennel. Whatever canine the Doyles may own isn’t occupying its little mansion just now. Sherlock curls up, reluctantly wraps a stinking blanket around his legs, and sets his head on the hard ground, his eyes wide and his heart still thumping. When he finally settles, his first thoughts are of his mother. He needs to see his parents. He feels like he’s been running for days. Tears well up in his eyes. He stops them. Drift off he tells himself, drift off. There’s much to do. There’s much to prove.
Not long afterwards, he is fast asleep.
IN DISGUISE
He doesn’t wake until the sun is well up in the sky. And even then, it takes him a while to rouse himself. Feeling cold and sore, he slowly raises his head, instinctively fixes his hair, and then looks down his grimy clothing toward his boots and out the open kennel door.
Two eyes are staring back at him!
He tries to stand and smacks his head against the roof.
“Sherlock!”
Irene.
“You made it? You came here? To my house?” She speaks as if she were looking at an apparition.
But it is the ghost himself who is most frightened.
“H-How did you know I was in here?” He asks, his voice shaking. “Is there anyone else at home?” His eyes dart past the edge of the door, surveying the backyard, glancing up at the windows on every floor.
“No. Father’s gone out and we don’t keep servants in the house. He doesn’t believe in it. We do many of the chores. He pays a maid-of-all-works to help a few hours every day. She’s already been and gone, and my governess is off today. I looked out here and saw a boot sticking out.” She pauses, staring at him. “I helped you escape from a jail!” For an instant it looks like she might get up and run. “You have to promise me something. You have to promise that you are …” She is flustered and pauses again, “… good.” Then she seems uncomfortable. “I didn’t express that well. What I mean is …”
“I am good,” he says, looking at her intently. “I promise. I’m not a criminal, Irene.”
“But you can’t stay here. Can you?”
“I can if you help me.”
“Well … you’ll need food … and dry clothes.”
Normally Sherlock would be upset about the state of his garments. But for once their condition isn’t important.
“We need to know what r
eally happened to that woman.”
“We do? You … and me?”
“Otherwise I’m in deep trouble … and Mohammad will die. He barely has two weeks left.”
She thinks for a second.
“Come into the house.”
Sherlock meets the dog just inside the back door.
The one and only John Stuart Mill.
He is a squat little brown-and-white Corgi who is past middle-age, with short, stubby legs, ridiculously tall ears, and is thick, both around his middle and between those startling hearing apparatus. He also has an evident problem with gas. The instant Sherlock enters the house, the slow-moving, slow-thinking little beast exerts an embarrassing noise from one end of his plump body and seizes the bottom of one of the boy’s trouser legs with the other, clamping on with a ferocious grip and not letting go.
“J.S. Mill is very protective,” says Irene with a red face, tugging him away from her friend. “I’ll put him downstairs. He has the run of the house as long as he behaves…. He decided he didn’t like sleeping outdoors some time ago.”
Their home is all wood and warmth. Huge colorful rugs lie on the floors, expensive paintings cover nearly every inch of the walls, and French furniture fills the many rooms. She marches Sherlock upstairs from the ground level, past the drawing room on the first floor, to the second, turns him down the hallway past her father’s bedroom, and then to her own. She closes the door from the outside. With her voice fading as she tiptoes away, she asks him to take off his clothes and drop them in the hall. He does and a minute later hears her walk gingerly back down the shining wood floor to retrieve them.
“Stay in there,” she calls, sounding nervous, almost commanding him. She is alone in the house with a boy. “I’ll have them clean and dry in two hours. There are towels by my washstand.” He hears her descending several flights, all the way down into the below-stairs area to where the servants and a laundress would normally work. Irene Doyle is indeed unusual.
There he is, in her room. It is a bit like being in heaven. He is distant from the depths of Southwark, the hell of his own home. He pours some water from a china pitcher into a basin on her washstand, finds some soap nearby, and washes himself, relieved to finally be clean. He pats his straight, black hair into place in a mirror and then looks around. Everything is bright; everything smells good. There are photo graphs on her dressing table and all over her walls. It looks like a gallery. Famous people are posed. He recognizes Adelina Patti, the great singer, the one and only “Champagne Charlie,” Leotard, the “Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” and many others. Her frilly red bed is stacked with sand-stuffed cloth animals. Books fill shelves. He sits on the floor and picks out a few. There’s Dickens of course, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Austen, and Poe, and some remarkably thick ones about Far Eastern history and English social issues, most in three-volume sets. He’s had no books, magazines, or even papers in jail. It has been a week since he’s read a single word on a printed page. Reading is like an addiction to him: he craves it the way desperate folks in the Lime House opium dens in the East End need their drug. He eyes the volumes hungrily. But it’s the children’s books that he can’t put down. He sits for a long time turning their pages, smiling at the ones whose insides pop up. It seems like only moments later that a rap comes on the door and a slim arm enters like a snake being charmed, and drops his clean clothes on the floor.
Eye of the Crow Page 7