“Fine! I shall speak even more plainly to you then. You are an idiot! You have always been an idiot! Everyone that knows you knows that you are an idiot and they detest you for it. If you had any brains at all, you would go find that strumpet governess and marry her immediately before she catches on to exactly how stupid you really are. As for you, Miss Adler, why don’t you go find another Duke, or perhaps even a Prince this time? Stop playing silly games in Whitechapel and get back to what you are really good at. Spreading your legs for men with money.”
I watched Irene tremble as Holmes spoke, but when I put my hand on her I found every muscle in her arm tensed, as if she were ready to strike him. Her words were like steel when she said, “When I met you I thought I had found a man worthy of my company, Holmes. You are nothing special to look at, but the quality of your mind was so singular that I found myself wondering what it would be like to go through life at your side. There were times when I wanted to come running to you, to offer you whatever earthly delight you could dream of, anything to win you. I must be a fool. I actually wrote you that letter asking you to help me put an end to these killings thinking that if you weren’t willing to give up your precious addictions to save London, perhaps you might be in order to be with me.”
Holmes did not move.
“I thank God that I never came to you before finding out what you truly are,” she said. She moved past me to the doorway, then stopped and looked back at me. “Are you coming, John?”
My jaw quivered as my eyes turned hot and moist. I struggled to speak, trying to steady my trembling lips.
Holmes turned on me with utter contempt. My voice shook when I finally found the strength to use it. “You are nothing more than a coward,” I managed. “Perhaps I do not have the same abilities as you but at least I am not sitting up here in this damned apartment hiding. I may, in fact, be an idiot.” Tears started to slide down my face as I spoke, but I did not care. “Maybe everyone truly does agree on this, but I will not sit rotting at your side one second longer while women are being slaughtered. I will not. It isn’t right. If it means my life, I shall use whatever paltry means I have at my disposal to fight him. May you burn in hell for not joining us.”
Holmes reached underneath his chair. He lifted his Moroccan case and opened it,
removing a new vial of cocaine and sharp syringe. He slowly began rolling up his sleeve.
I cleared my throat. “I want you to know that we are finished, Holmes. Forever.”
“Good,” he said. He tied off his arm and made a fist, clenching his fingers until the veins popped out along his arm.
“Forever!” I shouted.
“Are you still here?” he said.
Irene took my hand in hers and interlaced her fingers with mine. She pulled me toward the door and I followed her down the stairs. We walked through the door and away from 221 B Baker Street without looking back.
ACT III
YOU ARE THE QUARRY
SEVENTEEN
Francis Darwin looked at the broken lock on the building’s front door and frowned. He stepped back from the entranceway and checked the address again. 221 B, the sign over the doorway read. He looked up and down the block. “This is definitely Baker Street,” he said to himself. He checked the scrap of well-worn paper in his hand again, already knowing what it said: 221 B Baker Street—S. Holmes
As he knocked on the door, it swung open. The wood frame surrounding the lock was splintered and cracked and shards of it lie scattered on the entryway floor. Darwin’s attention was drawn to the lower apartment’s doorway where he could see people milling about within. The door was marked “221 A” and was broken open. As Darwin looked closer, he saw people stretched out across the floor with their arms and legs akimbo. In the corner, a woman was spread-eagled on the floor. Open sores covered the flesh of her bare thighs. A man leaned against the corner of the wall beside her, pulling his trousers back on and fastening them.
“Fascinating,” he whispered. As he spoke the stench of urine and vomit filled up his nose and he removed his handkerchief and pressed it to his face. He went up the stairs toward the door marked “221 B” and called out, “Mr. Holmes? Hello? Is anyone home?”
From the upstairs entrance he could see a man crouched on the floor, meticulously searching through the piles of the worn carpet. He muttered busily to himself as he inspected the spaces between each minute tuft of fiber.
Darwin swept his face and neck with his handkerchief, taking inventory of the room. There were drawers that had been yanked out of desks and cabinets thrown open with their contents scattered across the floor. Books were strewn about the room and pages of notes covered more areas of the floor than the carpet did. Darwin wrinkled his nose at the distinct odor of rotting food, and as he looked down, he saw several pieces of meat near the entrance. A white cat came from around the chair, sniffed the food and looked up at Darwin with fierce green eyes. “Excuse me, sir?” Darwin said.
“Come not an inch closer!” the man said, waving his hands frantically. “If you step on any of it, I cannot be held accountable for what happens to you.”
“I have not moved at all, sir. Is there any chance I could help find what you are looking for?”
“Lost?” he hissed. “You mean stolen. All of it, stolen while I was sleeping by vile bastards while I slept.”
Darwin looked down the staircase at the people mulling in and out of the lower apartment. “I could ring for the police if you like.”
There was no answer as the man returned to his inspection of the rug. He plucked a tiny fragment of dust from the bottom of the carpet and cried out with great joy. He popped the speck into his mouth and began rubbing the tip of his finger vigorously against his gums, only to spit into his hand. “Chalk,” he moaned. “Confound it!”
Darwin nodded, mystified. “I will leave you to your mission, sir. I apologize for barging in on you like this, but I was under the impression that someone formerly lived here whom I need to meet with. Would you happen to know what became of Sherlock Holmes? It is of incredible importance to me, and I am willing to pay you for the information.” When there was no response, Darwin shrugged and said, “Good day to you then, sir. If you should see Mr. Holmes, please let him know that Francis Darwin called on him. I can be reached at the Royal Society at Carlton House Terrace.”
“Charles Darwin?”
“Charles was my father.”
The man regarded Darwin for a moment, leaning forward and squinting. His drawn, sharp-featured face was lit momentarily by the fire. “My God,” Darwin said softly. “Is that you?”
Sherlock Holmes sat back on his heels, and then lifted himself from the rug. He tied the belt of his gown around his waist and moved toward the chair in front of the fireplace. He waved for Darwin to come in and sit down. Holmes lifted the blanket to his chin and regarded Darwin carefully for a moment. “I wonder what your father would have made of your baldness, Mr. Darwin.”
Darwin sat down. “He would have fretted that it was an inherited weakness passed onto me by him marrying his own cousin. He lived in eternal fear that we had inherited some sort of deficiency.”
Holmes cleared his throat by coughing forcefully several times. “Forgive me, Mr. Darwin. I have not had cause to speak for nearly a week. Tell me, if you do not mind, how many people were there downstairs in Mrs. Hudson’s former apartment?”
“I counted five. Where is Mrs. Hudson?”
“She left after a rather ugly incident. You would not happen to partake of cocaine by any chance, would you?” Holmes said.
“I am afraid not.”
“Morphine, perhaps? Any narcotic, really.”
“Never,” Darwin replied.
Holmes sighed. “Very well then, what seems to be the trouble, Mr. Darwin? Are you in danger?”
“No,” Darwin said. “I have a rather embarrassing situation and require someone with a good bit of reason and perhaps a tiny dash of knowledge about the elements involved. A friend rec
ommended you as the perfect man for the job, and I thought it best to call on your expertise.”
“I will make you an offer,” Holmes said. “If you are able to meet my conditions, I will hear out your tale.”
“You have but to name them.”
“First, my assisting you must not involve me having to leave the confines of this apartment. And for payment, I want you to agree to answer a series of questions for me, no matter what they are. And you must not inquire as to why I am asking them.”
“That sounds acceptable,” Darwin said.
“Then you, sir, may begin.”
Darwin removed several envelopes from his coat, sifting through them until he found the one he was looking for. “Here it is,” he said. “In 1880, my father received this letter from Henry Faulds, a British doctor living in Japan. Dr. Faulds was working at the Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo and, to pass the time, he began excavating for pottery around the countryside. During one of these expeditions, Dr. Faulds found a five hundred year old fragment of a jar, and was amazed at what he saw.”
“A rare relic worth millions?” Holmes inquired.
“No, the fragment was of no monetary value at all. Rather, it was something imprinted on the surface of the clay, an impression left by the artisan that crafted it so many years before. He found what he came later to call a fingerprint. Dr. Faulds became obsessed with the idea that the lines contained within this fingerprint were different from his, and that his were different from those of everyone that he encountered. As fate would have it, someone later broke into the medical supply room at the hospital where he worked, and a janitor was promptly arrested for the crime. A handprint was found on the glass inside the room, and Dr. Faulds was able to convince the Keishicho Police that the fingerprints of the accused and those found at the scene of the crime did not match. The janitor was summarily released.”
“Most interesting,” Holmes said.
“Dr. Faulds felt he was onto something huge and immediately flew back to London for a meeting with Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. All that he requested was the funding and support for the design of a system which could be used to classify the fingerprints of criminals and potentially change the face of criminal investigations around the world.”
“Being somewhat familiar with Sir Charles, I can deduce the results of that meeting,” Holmes said.
“If by that you mean it ended poorly, you are correct,” Darwin said. “Sir Charles saw absolutely no merit to possessing the fingerprints of criminals. Dr. Faulds was left at a loss. He suspected the enormity of his discovery, but had little idea how to go about verifying it scientifically. He was in quite a predicament.”
Holmes pondered the story carefully, and then smiled. “Naturally, he contacted the only person he could think of with experience in unraveling monumentally complicated scientific conundrums. Your father.”
“Exactly,” Darwin said, holding up the letter. “My father read through Dr. Faulds’s letter and inspected his own fingers. I remember him saying, ‘It all sounds remarkably interesting, but I have enough of my own problems.’ He forwarded the letter to our cousin Francis Galton.” Darwin took a deep breath, “For all that my father was in the field of science, I confess Cousin Francis to be twice that. At the time Father sent him the letter, Francis was simultaneously inventing the Quincunx Machine and formulating the basis for his eugenics philosophy. Francis Galton is a prolific intellect, Mr. Holmes. He has more proven theories, papers, inventions and awards to his name than I could ever dream.”
“I sense an ‘And yet’ is lingering in there somewhere,” Holmes said.
Darwin hung his head and closed his eyes. “And yet, eight years after my father sent Francis Galton this very letter from Dr. Henry Faulds regarding his discovery of the human fingerprint, Galton authored a paper proclaiming his own discovery of the same exact thing. Suffice to say, Dr. Faulds is not amused.”
“Understandably so,” Holmes said. “Is it a complete facsimile of Faulds’s discovery, or only a strong resemblance?”
“It has both enough differences and similarities to be argued either way, Mr. Holmes.”
“I do not see what it is that I can do for you, Mr. Darwin. It would seem that this is a matter best left to the courts, perhaps? I am no arbiter.”
“I understand that, and certainly, it may very well come to that, but in the mean time I feel that someone must at least make an effort on behalf of the greater good. I personally believe that this science is more valuable than the name of the man who gets to lay claim to inventing it. I had hoped your unique perspective might provide some needed guidance to both parties and help them set aside their own differences in order to better serve humanity.”
Holmes chuckled and looked around the room. “Perhaps I am not the person you wish to have speak on behalf of the greater good, Mr. Darwin.”
“You are the only person, sir,” Darwin said. “Whether it suits you or not.”
“Do you have copies of both the letter and Galton’s paper that you could leave for me?”
“I do,” Darwin said.
“Put them on the table and I will look them both over and tell you what my thoughts are after I have had time to consider the problem. That seems to be the best I can offer you at this time.”
Darwin laid both items on the table and sat back down, folding one leg over the other. “And now, you wanted to ask me some questions?”
Holmes sat up in his chair, stretching as if he had not moved in so long that his limbs would snap off if he shifted them too quickly. He tapped his finger against his chin, eyes suddenly lighting up. “Tell me something. Is this Francis Galton bald also?”
“As an egg.”
Holmes smiled briefly, but his eyes remained fixed intently on Darwin, taking the man’s measure as his mind collected the available information from his observations. “Most interesting. I am somewhat familiar with your father’s writings. Particularly, I am fond of his ideas about the struggle all living things must endure to survive. It makes sense to me that on the surface of things, the world is completely chaotic, with millions of different species of life co-existing on the same planet simultaneously, interacting at random. But your father’s idea was that beneath that layer of chaos, all is actually perfectly ordered. Each of those species is held in check by several others, so that no one is ever out of balance.”
“Yes,” Darwin said. “That sounds right.”
“Did your father ever speculate what would happen if there was an imbalance? If one of the more aggressive species began taking hold over the others?” Holmes said.
“Can you give me an example?” Darwin said.
“Let us say that there is a large pond, and the pond is filled with a variety of fish. Some fish feed off of the scum at the surface. Some fish feed from the scum at the bottom. Other, more sinister groups feed on those fish, and likewise, there are larger ones who feed on those as well. It is all one perfectly balanced system of life where each member of the habitat understands the rules of existence. They could live that way forever.” Holmes leaned forward and lowered his voice, “But, what if a new species were suddenly introduced into the pond? A wildly aggressive, intelligent, predatory creature bent only on destroying whatever stood in its path? A creature so outside of the norm that it was like nothing ever seen before. What would its effect be?”
Darwin sat back, folding his hands together. “I suppose, theoretically, if that new species upset the balance of the pond enough, it would eventually lead to complete and utter extinction.”
Holmes sat back and let the air out of his chest, as if he were deflating. “Extinction,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “I have nothing further to ask you, sir. Kindly show yourself out, Mr. Darwin.”
“One moment, Mr. Holmes. I mean this as no offense to you, but your scenario is not plausible. It is like debating what life on our planet would be like if all of us sprouted wings and could fly.”
“Expl
ain,” Holmes said.
“Nature does not allow for one singular member of a species to be suddenly introduced into any environment. There are plenty of examples of incredibly aggressive predators all over the world who regularly prey on the weaker members of their environs. None of them overrun those populations because they are held perfectly in check.”
“By what?” Holmes said as he leaned forward again.
“Other members of the same species, of course. In your pond scenario, that predator would run amok for a little while, but eventually, he would encounter his equal. My father was quite explicit in his statement that the struggle for survival between members of the same species are always most severe. In all actuality, the two predators fight and one would be killed. The second would be injured enough that a lesser species would rush in and finish him off.”
“A sacrifice for the benefit all else, then?”
“What pond is it that we are referring to, exactly, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes lifted his legs onto his chair, covering them with the blanket. “Thank you, Mr. Darwin. I will review your quandary and notify you of my findings in due time. Good day.”
EIGHTEEN
There was a sound was like that of a hundred hammers clanging against sheets of metal that crashed on his skull with such impact that it jarred him. Montague Druitt clutched the sides of his head in agony.
It was time for class.
He wiped the sweat from his face and staggered down the hall, collapsing into the seat at his desk as the students began to filter in. He swept his damp hair from his forehead and sat up, ignoring the concerned looks shot toward him by several of the students.
“Today we will discuss the court of law, and those who serve it. Please get your writing implements ready,” Druitt said, pressing on the desk to get to his feet. “First, we will begin with the barrister. A barrister, you see…appears before the court and presents argument. There is no…ah, no…contact with the person he is…” Druitt licked his lips nervously, gripping the sides of his desk. “There is absolutely no contact made with the accused, so that the court can trust he is impartial-“
Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (Gentlemen's Edition) Page 17