The Execution of Sherlock Holmes (12 page)

It was the first direct news of Holmes since his disappearance.

My dear Watson, I write this with gratitude to our redheaded friend. The events of my captivity and escape are such as you may now guess. Henry Milverton and James Calhoun perished at the hour they had chosen for my own death. Two underlings have sur vived. Beware the disgraced Petty Officer Alker, Master-at-Arms, a naval hangman. Most important, kindly address to me by first collection tomorrow a shoe box wrapped in brown paper, tied with blue string, and sealed with wax. ‘Poste restante, City Road Office, London
EC
1’ will find me. Make no secret that you are sending it to me. Our lives remain in danger. Noli Me Tangere.

I slept little that night as I pondered how to send a parcel by mail to ensure that our enemies saw the address upon it but without letting them know that I wished them to see it. At such moments I missed the presence of my friend beside me. What if the spies had found me unproductive and had ceased to spy upon me? I might have reassured myself. Until Sherlock Holmes was in their grasp again, I was the most likely person to lead them to him.

There was a warm summer wind and a scent of blossom as I set off down Baker Street with a wrapped shoe box under my arm on the following morning. I had as yet attached no label to the parcel. The coronation of our new king, Edward VII, was to be the spectacle of the season. Every window of the stationers and trinket shops offered mass-produced cards for sale, looking like the largest and most splendid playing cards you ever saw. Each displayed a crowned figure in full coronation robes of crimson or royal blue braided with gold, be it King Edward or Queen Alexandra, the Prince or Princess of Wales. A coronation ode by Dr. Benson of Eton College set to music by Sir Edward Elgar was thumping out from the regimental bandstand in the Regent’s Park, and was soon to be taken up by massed choirs the length and breadth of the land.

Land of hope and glory

Mother of the free …

In the post office I took a gummed label from a packet and wrote in large capitals the poste restante address my friend had given me. I was at one of the wooden tables provided, and before I could finish the final line, a fellow pushing through the crowd jogged my elbow suddenly and—I could almost swear—deliberately. My pen flew across what I had just written. I swung round on him. He was a stout, florid-faced man, his red hair somewhat darkened by age. Mr. Jabez Wilson of the Redheaded League treated me as a total stranger once more. Raising his hat, he said, ‘I do beg your pardon, sir, indeed I do. Entirely my fault. I really am so sorry.’

He went on his way, struggling through the crowd. I saw that Holmes had opened a door for me, and I knew exactly what to do. Muttering to myself, I screwed up the label, made a great display of irritation, and tossed the crumpled paper into the wire container of the basket in the corner of the room. I took a fresh label, and at length I handed the package to the clerk. I turned to the door and made my way out onto the steps.

Sunlight over the eastern rooftops was turning the day from spring to summer, warming the walls and terraces. I stood there for a moment, as if I had forgotten something. Turning abruptly, I made my way back to the counter. There I bought a dozen creamlaid envelopes embossed with a blue stamp and asked loudly, as if to reassure myself, whether a parcel handed in at 9:30 that morning would reach the City Road post office before the end of the afternoon. I was promised that it would. Then, as if finding the easiest way out through the crowd, I edged round past the wire basket into which I had thrown the first crumpled label. At such an early hour the basket had contained only that label, two folded sheets of paper that someone had discarded previously, and a messenger boy’s apple core. The folded sheets and the apple core were still there. The crumpled label with Holmes’s address upon it, which had been resting on top of them, was gone.

Dressed in a country suit and hat with a pair of optician’s horn-rimmed spectacles containing plain glass, I passed an hour after the postal delivery ruining my digestion with cups of coffee at the refreshment stall that fronts the corner of the City Road and Denmark Square. On that corner stands the City Road post office, also in line of sight from 23 Denmark Square, across its dusty central lawn.

Customers pushed their way in by the door marked ‘push’ and came out through the door marked ‘pull.’ I did not look for customers, however; I watched for the shoebox parcel tied with blue string. Whoever carried that was my man or, indeed, woman. Mr. Jabez Wilson was surely the most likely, unless Alker or one of our opponents tried to pass himself off as the recipient and collect the item from the counter.

I waited in vain until almost five o’clock. Then, to my dismay, I saw Sherlock Holmes striding confidently from Denmark Square towards the post office door. He wore a dark suit and hat, as if to advertise his presence. Why, after such careful concealment, had he now given himself away so completely and defiantly? I did not approach him, for that would have made matters worse.

I sat at the small metal table under the tin canopy of the stall, where I was hidden by the crowd of drinkers standing or sitting around me. Presently, Holmes reappeared with his parcel. He did not return to Denmark Square, but began walking down the City Road in the direction of the Metropolitan underground railway at Moorgate. It was that time of day when the commercial streets of the City begin to fill with shopworkers and office clerks pushing their way homeward.

I stood up, but even before I could step out from the canopy I saw the man who, I swear, was the master-at-arms. He did not look precisely like the fellow who had kept vigil in Pall Mall when Holmes was playing at being a military beggar. Yet there was enough about him to suggest that he was the same. Now I observed him in more detail. There was a broad face with the look of a smile at the mouth until you reached the eyes and saw that he was not smiling at all. He was heavily built, though not tall, and the strength in the arms suggested how easily he had pinioned those poor wretches who had struggled to gulp down a few moments more of breath and life. If his reputation is to be believed, he had adjusted the noose round the throats of seven murderers and three mutineers of the Pacific Squadron, as well as innumerable Chinese and Indian rebels. Though the afternoon was still mild, he was wearing a dark overcoat with the collar turned up.

My attention was briefly caught by a red-faced and bandy-legged little lounger who got up from a table near me. He, however, went off in another direction and was evidently not involved in the matter. Nothing in that bustling street of trade and traffic can have suggested to Holmes that he was now being followed. He did not so much as glance in Alker’s direction. My friend seemed in mortal danger, and yet I knew by instinct that I must not frighten off his pursuer. I had my revolver in my pocket, but it would have been impossible to fire it in such a place as this without the danger of hitting an innocent bystander. On the other hand, how easily might Alker, in the growing pressure of the crowd, draw level and slip a knife between the ribs of Sherlock Holmes.

Thanks to the jostling crowd, I was able to take up my position about ten feet behind Alker and follow him as he was following Holmes. Even had he caught sight of me, he might not have recognized me; but, in any case, the master-at-arms had eyes only for his quarry. As we crossed between the lumbering wheels of carts and wagons, towards the station, I became certain that he had come on his own.

Alker was not much more than a brute, but he had something of a brute’s simple cunning. He positioned himself so that in the press of passengers towards the train he was able to push his way into the carriage next to the one that Sherlock Holmes had entered. From time to time Holmes had made a movement at the last minute, as a matter of precaution, but never dextrously enough to outwit the patient hatred of his unseen adversary.

I had not the least idea what my friend’s destination might be. On these occasions one can only take a ticket for the longest journey and alight at whatever station may be necessary. As Alker sat in one carriage next to that of Holmes, I sat, or rather stood, in the carriage beyond it. By now I was as determined that Holmes should not see me and give the game away as I was that I should outwit Alker.

If our destination was Baker Street, we had surely taken the longest and slowest route, by way of Tower Hill, Westminster, Kensington, the bleak suburbs of West London, Paddington, and Marylebone. I consoled myself by believing that Holmes knew what he was doing and that he could scarcely come to harm on the train with Alker in a different carriage. At every station I moved to a point where I could see who got off the train. It was at Kensington that I saw the tall, gaunt figure of Sherlock Holmes step down to the platform and walk slowly away. Kensington, it seemed to me, had no connection with the case at all. Perhaps it was a blind, as they say. He did not even look round as Alker went cautiously after him. I let several passengers precede me and then took up the pursuit. The whole business had an element of farce, and yet, as events were about to show, it had death at its heart.

It was not difficult to keep track of Holmes and his shadow, by using the rounded bulk of the Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial. Then Holmes, unaware of how close danger and death had come, made the worst mistake of all. With the sun below the horizon and dusk setting, he turned through Alexandra Gate into the vast unlit territory of Hyde Park. By the time that we reached the far side and the streets that led home, the trees, bushes, and grassland would be in darkness, the perfect terrain for an assassin.

Already the parkland seemed deserted. A photographer was wheeling out his black canvas booth through the gate; ribboned children and their governess were carrying off the toy yacht they had been sailing on the Round Pond of Kensington Gardens. Alker continued to shadow Holmes with consummate ease among so many trees and the bushes of laurel or rhododendron. The way led parallel with Kensington Gore for a while. Then Holmes turned, as if to cross Rotten Row and leave all safety behind him. He walked unhurriedly, without once looking back, still carrying his parcel and deep in thought. He was offering himself for the kill.

I drew the revolver from my pocket, but kept it concealed. Beyond the tops of the furthest trees, where the great Park Lane terraces show their upper floors, there were lights in several windows. It would soon be too dark to shoot. There was nothing for it but to attack or accost Alker. He was in the open some forty yards behind Holmes and I was about as far behind him again. We had reached the wide earthen carriageway of Rotten Row, lined by chestnut trees on either side, where ‘pretty little horsebreakers’ of the 1860s broke more hearts than horses. Even now the Sunday morning ‘church parade’ of open carriages, with drivers and grooms in livery and silk hats, makes it the parade of gallantry, no less than the mounted regiments galloping in the weekday dust.

What followed was so rapid and so unreal that I can still scarcely believe I was a witness. Holmes turned suddenly and shouted in a tone of anger, ‘Watson! You had really better leave all this to me!’

As if that were a signal, there was a drumming like a boxer’s gloves on a canvas training bag. A fine bay horse with its head down, pulling against the bit, came pounding over the bare earth of the Row as it gathered speed. I stood still, stricken by astonishment. These is no other phrase for it; the whole thing was like an apparition. On the horse’s back was a figure in regimental uniform of some kind. It was growing dark, but not too dark to make out a scarlet jacket, brass buttons, and a cavalry trooper’s cap on his head.

Alker stopped as well, for he had been about to cross the hardened earth of Rotten Row in pursuit of Holmes. Now he was prevented from doing so by the approach of the horse. The trooper was riding as if a pack of hellhounds might be after him, and even from where I stood I could hear the snorting breath of his mount.

Alker took a step or two backwards, as if to keep clear of the galloping horse whose hooves were now showering earth to either side. I could see that the rider was leaning forward, his chest along the horse’s neck. He appeared to be performing some trick in which he would whisk something from the ground as he sped by. Then I saw that what he held in his hand was a cavalry saber. Suddenly he held it out sideways. It did not flash, for there was too little light, but I could swear that I saw a pale gleam. It cut the air with no more than a whisper and then there was a sudden whistling sound as the air left Alker’s body through his severed neck while his head bumped along the dried earth.

I was unable to move from the spot in my terror and fascination—even though this might have been some madman who intended to kill us all. I saw that Alker’s headless body remained upright for several seconds before it crumpled to the ground, as if some lingering message from the missing brain was still controlling the dying limbs. I had heard of such grisly wonders in cavalry engagements.

I need not have worried about the rider’s intentions. He looked neither to right nor to left, never slackening his speed. The hoofbeats grew gentler until dusk veiled the identity of the man whom I was to hear of as the corporal of horse.

Sherlock Holmes appeared to be unmoved.

‘A weak man, perhaps, but not a wicked one,’ he said calmly. ‘Now he may live without fear. I shall not betray him to our friends at Scotland Yard if you do not. If I calculate correctly, he is the only one remaining of those with whom I had dealings during the weeks of my captivity. Others were to have been there but were prevented for one reason or another. I fear it is not impossible that we may yet hear from them. However, let us be thankful that we have purged the world of the majority.’

I did not reply. The shock of what had happened deprived me of the power of motion for a few minutes, but I did not sleep all that night and I was physically incapable of speech until late on the following day. Whether the corporal of horse contrived on his own to rid the world of the one conspirator who might kill him, or whether he and Holmes planned the whole thing together, I do not know. I may say, however, that my friend did not betray him and nor did I.