Death in the Air (23 page)

Despite lightening his load, he’s exhausted by the time he reaches the southern entrance of the Thames Tunnel. That isn’t good – he needs to be strong and alert. His face still aches from Grimsby’s blows. He struggles along Rotherhithe Street in the dark, his eyes searching for the Asphalte Works.

He spots them, smelling worse tonight, it seems, looking darker, their black chimneys blacker. And there are the crumbling warehouses.

He crouches against the broken-down wall of an abandoned soap factory and looks across wide Rotherhithe and
down the much smaller, cobblestone street that runs away from it toward the river and past the warehouses. His first plan is to try to do as much of this as he can from a distance. If he is lucky, he’ll see Dante again, maybe talking to members of the Brixton Gang, hopefully doing something that gives away their identity.

But the luck that Sigerson Bell wished for him isn’t with him tonight.

He waits, and no one comes. The warehouses stay black and silent except for a dim light and distant, muffled sounds in the upstairs floor of the last one near the river.

He realizes how ridiculous it is to think that he can do anything from this far away, but how unprepared he is to do much more. He has no idea what even one member of the gang looks like and the belief that they would somehow do something that would give them away doesn’t make sense.

No, he has to go over there … right to the warehouses. There are times, his father used to say, even in the world of science, when you must gamble, when plans are not possible and nothing is certain. That’s when the word
experiment
really means what it says.

Sherlock has to experiment; and hope this doesn’t blow up in his face.

He rises and darts across Rotherhithe Street and onto the lane that fronts the desolate buildings. The sounds of his footsteps echo, and just like the night before, it seems there are many of them … more than his own. What a time, after all his precautions, to discover that he’s indeed being followed! But when he looks around, no one is in sight, ahead
or behind. He keeps moving, close to the buildings, all his senses alert.

Just as he suspected, there doesn’t appear to be anyone inside … except in that last one, where those faint sounds seem to be coming from. That building is so far from the main road, and close to the river, that raised voices in its inner sanctums can’t be clearly made out by passersby unless they are right up close.

Though it terrifies him to even contemplate, Sherlock realizes that he is going to have to enter the building. All the doors on the other warehouses are broken, and knocked in, but when he gets to this last one, he can see that its entrance is closed tightly. He slowly approaches it … very slowly … then stands with his back plastered against the dirty brick wall. No one inside can see him there, even if they look through the door’s little barred window or straight down from an upper floor. The sounds are indeed coming from this warehouse, somewhere upstairs. He gently nudges the thick wooden door with one hand.

It creaks open.

It must have been unlatched. That seems strange, in fact it doesn’t make sense, but he crouches down and slips inside anyway. Instantly, two small figures fly at him! They are black and oily, and scream.
Crows
. They swoop past his head and out into the night, crying out as if warning him. The muffled sounds from upstairs pause for a second … and then resume. Sherlock lies on the dirt floor, his heart pounding. Crows always have reasons for being places; they can sense impending death and how to profit from it.
They understand evil, accept it as a part of life, especially when it is perpetrated by human beings, which is often. The crows know something is afoot in this broken-down place: the bloody Brixton Gang would be a perfect group of human beings for these clever birds to keep their eyes on.

Though it is dim in here, Sherlock can make out the room’s cluttered innards: monster coils of ropes for boats, long wood poles that look like pieces of masts, moldy sections of sails, and oily remnants of steam engines. It smells earthy, and like the river.

The upstairs sounds are getting clearer. It is plain that they aren’t solely human. The boy hears a dog snarling and the squeals and painful cries of other, smaller animals; and desperate scurrying and scrambling across the floor. Men seem to be encouraging them. It sounds like fighting and it frightens Sherlock to his Wellington shoes.

Perhaps it is time to go?

But he doesn’t know anything of value yet. He has to get closer. He spots a crumbling staircase that rises straight up in the center of this fishy, foul-smelling ground floor.

What if I go up there?

He wants to move toward it, but can’t. He is simply too scared. His whole body is shaking.

Then the big, outside door closes behind him.

Sherlock drops flat on the floor and lies as still as possible. The garbled sounds from above pause again and then resume. On the ground level, there is silence. No footsteps, nothing. Sherlock waits. Was it just the wind? But the humid
night had been still outside. He twists his head around and peers in the direction of the door.

Nothing.

Going back to that entrance seems as perilous now as moving to the staircase and up its rotting steps. So he waits a little longer and then crawls to the center of the room. At the stairs, his hawk-like nose almost resting on the stinking bottom plank, he casts his eyes upward. Sweat drips off his forehead and into his eyes, making them sting. There’s a board pulled across the opening at the top and a small crack of light emitting from the next floor. He can hear those horrific sounds better here; can clearly make out the dog’s growls and cries of pain, the other animals’ screams and whistles, and men shouting encouragement.

“Go to ’em, Killer! Face ’em, me boy! Face ’em!”

Sherlock slides onto the first step and begins to move upward, still on his belly, using his feet to secure footing on each step and push himself forward. Without warning the third step gives way and his foot goes right through with a loud crack. To him, it sounds like an air gun going off.

He freezes. The men upstairs stop talking momentarily, but then start again. Sherlock looks down at the ground floor. As he does, for an instant he thinks he sees a tall boy standing against the far wall in a top hat and long black tailcoat. Sucking in his breath, he closes his eyes hard and opens them again. The image is gone. All he sees is a greasy rope hanging on a big curving hook on that wall, just below a little shelf with a section of a black stove pipe resting on it.

He looks up again, takes another step, and feels his hair touch the floorboard. Placing his fingers ever so slowly into the crack, he tries to shove the board back, but it won’t budge.
Maybe it is nailed
. He braces his feet on the step below – it feels steady – and shoves harder on the board. It loosens and snaps back, slamming down as it lands. Again Sherlock holds his breath; again the men momentarily stop talking … and then go on.

The boy waits for a count of one hundred before he lifts his head, very slowly, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, just high enough so he can see into the room, readying himself to leap down and run from the building. But from where he is, he can’t spot anyone. He turns his head in every direction and surveys the space. There are fewer dirty remnants of the seafaring life here; in fact the floor is almost empty, its only real inhabitant, a thick layer of dust.

Moments later Sherlock Holmes is standing in the room, aware that whatever is going on up above is
directly
over him. No more than a few steps away from the opening in the floor through which he has just ascended, an old wooden ladder is propped straight up into the ceiling. Sherlock glides silently over to it. The sounds from above grow louder as he nears. He peers up. The ladder was obviously placed here after a staircase collapsed because it leads to another, sealed-off opening. This building has evidently not been in use for a long time. The trapdoor has an iron handle, and is cut just right, so the butts at the top of the ladder fit tightly into two holes.

That’s where he must go
.

Only now he really wonders if he should. Again, he has no idea what the Brixton Gang look like (though it sounds like four men on the upper floor, the group’s exact number). What would he accomplish by actually seeing them?

But he can’t report to Scotland Yard that he’s simply found four strange men doing something suspicious in a Rotherhithe warehouse. They could be anyone having illicit fun – sporting men, tradesmen, even politicians or police employees. No…. He has to go up there and try to spot something that identifies them.

Sherlock places one boot gingerly on the bottom rung, then the next, and then the next, until his eyes are right at the handle.

Dare he lift the trapdoor?

The sounds of the dog and other animals are pitiful now – it is obvious that the canine is fighting the others. Every last beast sounds desperate.

“Lay ’em bets down, Charon!” cries one horrible voice.

Charon. That’s one name
.

“But the poor brute ain’t got naught left in ’im! Look, ’e’s puffin’ like a steer! ’e’s bleedin’ all over the bleedin’ place!”

There is laughter.

“You got enough left from the Palace job, Sutton! Lay it down!” demands a whiny higher-pitched player.

The Palace job. And another name
.

“’ow many rats left?” growls the first, rough voice.

A sinking feeling passes through Sherlock. He knows what these fiends are doing. They are pitting rats, likely dozens of them, maybe hundreds, against a bull terrier in a
fight to the death; and betting on it. He’s read of this sort of thing, but never really believed it happened, or if it did, that he would ever be near it. He has entered a den of evil indeed, a sort of Hades. He wishes he had the strength and the numbers to burst into that room and arrest them all.

But he isn’t gaining enough evidence to do anything, not standing here blind below these fiends. He has two names, some talk of a “job,” and an illegal animal fight. That might be enough to bring the police … or it might not. To be sure, he needs more. He has to get a look at their faces, at least one of them. He has to be able to recognize them.
No one has ever seen a member of the Brixton Gang
. Despite the danger, this is too much for Sherlock Holmes to resist. He imagines handing the money to Redhorns, the look on Lestrade’s face, and the glory it will bring him.

He grips the handle with one hand and the other sneaks into his coat and pulls out the three-foot long hunting crop. It is a hard, formidable weapon, meant to get the attention of a two-thousand-pound animal. If he can use it right, bring this horsewhip violently to bear on any villain who might come at him, it may buy him enough time to get away.

He is betting that the men are enthralled with what they are doing and that he can lift up the trapdoor a few inches and look into the room undetected, only his eyes in view. He will be well ahead of any potential pursuers. When he broke into four mansions in search of the Whitechapel murderer two months ago, Malefactor had given him sound advice – to locate an avenue of escape
ahead of time. He knows exactly how to get out of this warehouse: down the ladder, down the stairs, and through the maze of narrow streets. He purposely left the floorboard pulled back.

He’s ready.

He pushes the trapdoor up slowly, inch by inch. He can’t see anything clearly: just boots and trouser cuffs and the short wooden walls of an enclosure, obviously the pit for the animals, all lit by the soft glow of candles and a few gas lamps. The sounds almost turn his stomach. The fight has obviously been going on for a long time and the poor beasts are suffering. Sherlock hears their pitiful cries of pain and sees blood splattered on the tops of the walls. It makes him angry. He recklessly lifts the trapdoor farther up, nearly a foot.

Three men turn to him and smile. They look calm.
Why is that?
They seem to be expecting him.
Why
is that?

And where is the fourth man?

The answer comes instantly.

A big black boot, worn by someone standing directly behind the trapdoor, wedges under its elevated surface and snaps the whole thing back with a crash, leaving it wide open. An evil, whiskered face with black eyes stares down at him, smiling too.

Sherlock has seen all four members of the Brixton Gang! He doesn’t hesitate. Gripping his hunting crop, he jerks his feet off the rung and slides down the ladder to the floor. He lands with a thud. But when he turns he gets the shock of his life.

The dark-dressed boy is standing directly in front of him, inches from his face, his breath as foul as a skunk’s.

Sherlock thinks of the apothecary’s movements when he practices his martial arts. It seems to be all about balance and leverage and getting the right distance, the distance you need to employ the weapon you have. He steps back and raises his horsewhip. He intends to lay it across this fiend’s face.

But the other boy isn’t interested in fancy maneuvers. He is a street person, a hardened criminal who has learned from experience how to react instantly in desperate situations. He knows to stay in close to his opponent.

“What ’ave we ’ere?”

He steps forward as Sherlock steps back, seizing the hand with the hunting crop and twisting it violently, almost snapping the bone.

“Ahhh!”

Sherlock shrieks in pain and drops his weapon. In the blink of an eye, he feels a deep sting across one of his thighs and then another, making him buckle and drop to the floor. He raises his arms to protect his face and looks up at his enemy. The other boy has the hunting crop in his hand and has stepped back; four grimy, blood-splattered men are standing beside him, forming a semi-circle around Sherlock Holmes.

“We’ve been expecting you,” growls one of them with a horrible grin.

All that is going through Sherlock’s mind is:
The Brixton Gang kills people, without thinking twice
.