As if a benevolent providence had somehow divined my thoughts, the tent flap at the entry opened and toward us came Lucy James and Zoe Rosario, each carrying a small tray with some scones and a steaming mug of tea. “We thought you’d appreciate something warm,” Lucy said. “We have a few minutes before we need to be in costume—though no one’s said for certain that we’re really going to perform tonight.”
“We wondered if you could tell us anything about that,” said Zoe.
Ignoring the tea, Holmes nodded toward the lights and soldiers below us. “We have heard nothing official. But to begin such a flurry of military activity and expense and then send everyone home—I cannot imagine the committee doing that unless there was new evidence that indicated imminent danger.”
Zoe pulled her black woolen shawl tight around her. “The police and the Navy men have looked everywhere. One of them even inspected the inside of the violin Mr. Carte borrowed for me. He held it over an electric torch and peered inside—he twisted his head around until I thought he would injure his neck. But nothing.”
Lucy said to Holmes, “You don’t look happy, though.”
“Something is not right. We are forgetting something.”
“Then take some tea,” said Zoe. “It may help you to remember.”
“Anyway, we have news of another kind,” Lucy said. “Mr. Carte has invited us to join a touring company in Rome. We would leave this coming Saturday.”
“Did you have something to do with that, Sherlock?” asked Zoe.
“I should be relieved to know both of you were safely out of London.”
“And Rome? Which gives me the opportunity to introduce Lucy to my parents? You didn’t suggest that to Mr. Carte?”
“I’ve never seen Rome,” Lucy said brightly. As Holmes remained silent, she went on, “I know I can’t stay on as a lead at the Savoy. The role really belongs to Miss Perry. She’s already well enough to sing—in fact she’ll be in the chorus tonight.”
Lucy stopped, looking past Holmes. “Oh, my. There’s Johnny!”
Young Rockefeller was standing at the roped-off entryway, in animated conversation with one of three Navy guardsmen. Holmes took a few steps in their direction and caught the attention of the guards. Soon young Rockefeller was with us.
“I came over to tell you that the performance is on for tonight,” he said. “I just had the official word from Mother, who had it from Father. Oh, and all the men on the Prime Minister’s committee are still waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie at the White Star. Father has assigned each one of them a stateroom to use as a dressing room and they’re having their evening clothes sent over. Their wives are being brought here in separate carriages, each with two Army officers as escorts.”
“What did you see of the meeting?” asked Holmes.
“I came in with Father, but then he thought it best if I made my exit. Some old fossil started yammering some nonsense about an Official Secrets Act.”
“That would have been the Chancellor,” I explained. “The chief legal officer, in charge of all British courts. He has always been a hidebound reactionary on the bench, and now he seeks to impose his views even though he is but one member of a committee.”
“What an idiot,” said young Rockefeller. “What do you suppose ails the fellow?”
“The old tiger cannot change his stripes,” I said, offhandedly.
Holmes stared at me as if my words contained a dreadful hidden meaning. Then he was at my side, his voice hushed so that only I could hear him. “Moran is watching us.”
As I struggled to understand, Holmes turned to young Rockefeller, gripping his forearm with an urgency that made the young man wince.
“Mr. Rockefeller. Would you please return to the White Star and tell your father that he and the committee should not board the Corsair unless they have heard directly from me that it is safe to do so.”
Rockefeller looked puzzled, but nodded assent as Holmes turned to Miss Rosario. “Zoe, would you tell Mr. Carte that the troupe is to remain below until he has received my personal assurance of safety.” Then he drew closer to her, his lips nearly touching her ear, and spoke too quietly for me to understand.
The effect of his words on Miss Rosario was immediate. She folded her arms as if to protect herself. A deep blush suffused her cheeks. She looked downward, then at Lucy, and finally at Holmes. I barely heard her say, “As you wish.”
Holmes turned to me, and I saw in his glittering eyes both determination and despair. “Watson, we must go immediately.”
As we strode away from the astonished trio, Holmes gestured toward the quay, and upward, and beyond, to the row of darkened warehouses that loomed above us, shadowed against the night sky.
“Moran has set up his huntsman’s blind once again. The old tiger hunter is watching us from one of these warehouses, Watson, just as he did last year, from the empty house on Baker Street.”
“But the warehouses are under police guard.”
“I tell you the old shikari is looking down upon us even now, and all these shining new streetlamps have perfectly illuminated his target.”
PART FOUR
NEVER FORGOT
52. TAKEN
A few faint yellow gas lamps guided us through the squalid darkness of Dockland Way. The street was deserted, for this part of London was not a place to remain after the ground-floor shops had closed. On our right, one block distant and through an alley between two large warehouses, a faint white glow came from the newly installed streetlamps on the quay that separated these buildings from the Corsair, the Shamrock, and the White Star.
Walking rapidly beside Holmes, I felt uncertain and apprehensive, for I did not know our destination or what we were looking for. I must also admit that my feelings were heightened by simple fear, since neither of us could see exactly what dangers might surround us in the shadows.
Holmes seemed to sense my apprehension. “Bear with me, Watson,” he said, slowing his pace only slightly. “Moran is in one of these buildings. We must look for clues to his whereabouts.”
“But why are we alone? Why did you not ask for policemen to accompany us?”
“There are police guards posted at each of the entrances to each of these buildings. When we find our quarry, we shall enlist their aid.”
I looked up at the looming bulk of the huge warehouses, trying to see within the Gothic curves of the huge glass windows. “Are we looking for a glimmer of light?”
“We are looking for a police carriage.”
“But there are police carriages at every corner.”
“We are looking for the one Worth stole last night in Piccadilly. When we find it, you must go straight to the Commissioner and bring as many of his men as he can spare. You will stay close to the buildings along the quay, in order to—”
He froze. We had come to a second alleyway, dividing one of the warehouses from the next. I could see the shadowy outline of a carriage waiting at the far end, silhouetted against the streetlamps, but I could not see a driver. The light being against us, it was impossible to say whether the vehicle was a brougham, a hansom, or a police carriage.
“His means of entry and escape,” said Holmes. “Quietly, now.”
We advanced as silently as we could, crossing the narrow road and entering the alleyway. I could hear the wind from the dock as it swirled between the high brick walls. I heard the rustle and clink of leather and brass as the horse shifted its weight in its harness. As we came closer, I could see small clouds of steam emanating from the horse’s nostrils, shimmering like luminescent fog before the streetlamps.
Finally, I could see the rear of the carriage, which was taken up nearly entirely by a large, partially opened door. “I cannot see anyone, Holmes,” I whispered.
“Stay here,” he replied. “If there is a driver I shall distract him. When you see movement, run to the oppos
ite side of the vehicle, get to the quay, and tell the Commissioner to send help.”
I held my breath, watching as Holmes walked silently to the carriage. His revolver at the ready, he opened the rear door.
I saw only darkness within the rear compartment. Holmes turned to look at me. His eyes widened with alarm.
Then at the back of my neck I felt a hard and metallic pressure.
“He has a shotgun, Watson,” said Holmes.
Behind me, a man spoke. “We saw you come across the quay as soon as you left the Corsair,” he said. “You were quite visible in all this lamplight, but you did not see me behind you.”
The words were indistinct, as if the man had difficulty forming them. “This gun has two barrels. How appropriate. Drop your gun, Mr. Holmes, if you want your friend’s head to remain on his shoulders.”
It was the voice of James Blake.
53. THE OLD SHIKARI
Blake marched us at gunpoint to the entrance at the front of the building. The entrance was unguarded. Inside the doorway we passed the crumpled body of a policeman, leaned against the stairway wall. Step by step, Blake marched us up the six flights of stairs at the front of the warehouse. The staircase had windows, and in the light from the new streetlamps outside I could see Blake was keeping his shotgun trained on Holmes. Each time we reached a landing and our path turned upward, I visualized myself turning around and making a dive at Blake. But each time I held back, knowing my attempt to stop him would endanger Holmes, for I could see that Blake always remained at a distance far enough away to dodge me, yet close enough that his first shot could not fail to hit its target. His swollen and bruised lips twisted into a grim smile each time our eyes met, as if he was anticipating the moment when he would pay me back for the injury I had given him.
At the top of the staircase, we passed through a doorway and found ourselves at the edge of a dark, cavernous expanse, illuminated on our left by the pale white glow from a long row of tall windows. About sixty feet away, dark rows of wooden crates had been stacked nearly twenty feet high, blocking our view of the far end of the warehouse.
The window light revealed the crouching figure of a man seated on a plain wooden chair. Between the man and the nearest window, several opened crates of ammunition lay beside a tripod-mounted Maxim gun. I drew in my breath, for I knew that the weapon before me was capable of delivering 500 rounds of lethal ammunition and killing hundreds of men, all in less than one minute.
The man spoke. “Yes, Mr. Holmes. We are at the front of the warehouse, almost directly across the quay from the Corsair. I have not forgotten our last meeting.”
He sat up and turned to face us. Light from the window shone on his lined, gaunt features and high, bald forehead. It was unmistakably Colonel Sebastian Moran, the murderer we had captured in a deserted house seventeen months previously, just after his air gun bullet had smashed through our front window at Baker Street. On that occasion the bullet had exploded harmlessly within a wax sculpture of Holmes’s head, and we had triumphed. I feared that now the tables had been turned.
Holmes said, “Your complexion is more pallid than before you went to prison, and I see you are attempting to grow back your mustache.”
“Much has changed, Holmes,” Moran replied. “But now you are the one in the trap.”
“Where is Worth?”
“He departed shortly after you left the Corsair. He saw something on the quay.”
“What?”
“Something that interested him. He will return soon enough, and your curiosity will be fully satisfied at that time, I can assure you.”
“Dr. Watson and I appreciate your courtesy. And yours also, Mr. Blake. Though I am sure each of you would prefer a different course of action if left to your own devices. I take it Mr. Worth has instructed both of you that we are not to be harmed until he returns?”
Neither man spoke. Blake had moved to stand before the window at our right, so that his shotgun would not endanger Worth if he fired in our direction.
Holmes went on, “And you are compelled to obey, since Worth knows how to retrieve the fortune in bearer bonds that you hope to earn for your night’s work here. But I wonder how you intend to ensure that you collect what has been agreed upon between you and Worth. Of course, if Worth disappears with his son and daughter when he has the funds in hand, you, Colonel, will not find it easy to locate him. Will he reward your loyalty? I notice that he did not reward your loyalty for traveling with the Professor to Reichenbach and then pursuing me for three years. He allowed you to languish in Dartmoor. And I suspect he arranged for your escape rather more because he had a use for you than because he wanted to reward you. Or do you see it differently?”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Blake. “He’s just trying to stir you up.”
“I also wonder,” Holmes went on, “how you will explain away the brown stains on your fingertips when you attempt to play cards at any of the fashionable clubs which you formerly frequented. You developed the stains, of course, by picking oakum ropes for so very many long and tedious hours in Dartmoor. But now those stains mark you as a convict. People in polite society are inclined to look askance at stained hands, at least if they are attached to someone trying to pass himself off as a gentleman.”
“You persist in goading me, Mr. Holmes.”
“I merely hope to satisfy my curiosity on a few more points. For instance, I wonder how Mr. Worth came to walk in that slightly twisted manner of his. I know he claims it is the result of a wound from the American Civil War, but a report I received from the American authorities makes no mention of this. I fancy there was a wound, however, for I know that a shattered shoulder blade, improperly healed, produces that same twisted effect in a man’s posture. So I wonder, Colonel, just who shot him in the back. Likely it was someone he allowed to get close to him, which would mean a betrayal of his trust. And the betrayal was one of which he was ashamed, since he took pains to conceal it by fabricating an alternative explanation. Given his fixation on perpetuating the Moriarty family line, a betrayal by a family member would bring on a sense of failure and shame. So my question: was it Professor James Moriarty who shot him?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“You do not have to say anything. I wonder if he shot his brother shortly after they came to England with the fortune obtained from the Boylston Bank robbery. Perhaps there was a dispute over the shares? Or perhaps the brother who would become a professor wished to use the funds to invest in a new criminal network in London, and the other brother was not willing to take such a risk?”
“Are you trying to distract me, Mr. Holmes? It will not work.”
“Ah, well. Perhaps Mr. Blake has taken an interest in his family’s history.”
Holmes was about to continue, but a noise of machinery came from behind us, from the opening to the motorized platform lift beside the stairway door. Moran turned to look as the lift rose to our level and revealed a shadowy group of figures standing behind the protective metal grid. I hoped momentarily that we were about to be rescued. But Blake seemed to be perfectly sanguine about the new arrivals. As he had done throughout Holmes’s narrative, he continued to stare dispassionately at us while cradling his shotgun.
The lift stopped, the metal grille slid open, and the white glow from the windows now silhouetted five people coming toward us. I recognized Adam Worth, unmistakable in his twisted posture, and another man who wore a policeman’s uniform. Each of them carried a shotgun.
The three others held their hands in the air and shuffled slowly toward us, faces rigidly forward, as though wary of making any sudden movement. My heart sank as I recognized Johnny Rockefeller, Zoe Rosario, and Lucy James.
54. A REVELATION
I could see the dismay on the faces of Lucy and Johnny when they realized that Holmes and I were also prisoners. Then their dismay turned to alarm as they saw the Maxim gun an
d the huge piles of ammunition alongside it. I dared not look at Holmes.
Johnny Rockefeller made a brave attempt to knock the gun from its tripod, possibly hoping to damage the firing or feed-through mechanisms. As he passed Moran, he turned sideways and launched himself at the apparatus. But he fell short, landing on the hard concrete floor with a sharp impact, just before a kick from Moran’s boot connected with his shoulder. Young Rockefeller lay still for a moment and then sat up, glaring at Moran, who stood over him as though prepared to repeat the attack.
“Show some sense, Worth,” snapped Holmes. “This particular prisoner is a valuable hostage, and you may need him to bargain with.”
“My apologies, Mr. Rockefeller,” Worth replied. He gave Moran a sharp look, which caused the man to retreat to his chair and sit down, the Maxim gun within easy reach. Then Worth beckoned to Lucy and Zoe, indicating they should sit beside young Rockefeller on the concrete. In the light from the window, Worth’s face appeared to glow with triumph.
“I will not sit,” said Zoe.
“Nor I,” said Lucy.
But the young policeman stepped behind them and kicked each woman hard in the back of the knees. Each fell. Instinctively I took a step forward. Blake and Worth reacted simultaneously, brandishing their shotguns, and I saw that, for the moment at least, resistance was unavailing. Worth spoke gruffly.
The Last Moriarty Page 20