The Execution of Sherlock Holmes (43 page)

‘And our colonel?’

‘He must bolt for home, among the apaches of the Place Pigalle and the street women of the Avenue de Clichy. You may be sure that his rooms at the Hellfire Club are deserted—and the bill unpaid! The next ferry train for Folkestone and Boulogne, I think, Watson.

He need only collect two small and unremarkable packages from the telegraph office, assume the style of a boulevardier, and dine tonight beyond the reach of the English law, while Jago and Lestrade are still searching the Mansion House!’

We were pelting downhill toward Ludgate Circus, the great dome of St. Paul’s and its pillared portico at our backs.

‘The game is altered for him,’ Holmes said grimly. ‘He believes he has seen the very jewel he stole and dispatched half an hour before. It could not by any means be where he saw it now unless he was betrayed. In his place, how would you respond to that?’

‘I should go straight to wherever I expected it to be—to see what trick had been played upon me.’

‘Exactly.’

Our driver, a uniformed constable, saw ahead of him a barrier across Fleet Street and the Strand, routes reserved that afternoon for the royal procession.

‘With any luck,’ said Holmes softly, ‘our fugitive will have been delayed by that.’

We swung right towards Blackfriars Bridge. In a moment we were racing along the Embankment towards Westminster, the river sparkling on our left, penny steamers trailing banners of black smoke; on our right, the trees and lawyers’ chambers of the Temple. We swung again, up the narrow canyon of Villiers Street, Charing Cross Station on a vast undercroft of sooty brick rising massively above us.

Holmes was out of the carriage first, racing for the departure platforms. We found Inspector Jago, still in black uniform with gold piping, pacing the concourse, studying the passengers who filed past the ticket-collectors. I saw Holmes signal to him and they drew back cautiously behind a corner of the bookstall, where they could keep watch on the post and telegraph office.

As I joined them, Holmes was saying earnestly, ‘Twenty past two. There is a ferry train at three and calculate the packages were collected from the office half an hour ago. You may be sure the name on them will not be Moriarty. It may be Lemonnier. It may be anyone.’

He strode across the busy concourse in full view and entered the office while Jago and I watched. I saw him at the counter, confronting the manager, a man of middle age, no doubt accustomed to dealing with postal fraud. Their conversation continued until I saw Sherlock Holmes shout something at the unfortunate guardian.

There was a pause during which the man may have replied. Then he very slowly raised his hands in the air. I guessed that Holmes had drawn—or threatened to draw—my revolver from his pocket. There were moments of passionate anger in him when he might certainly be capable of shooting a postal official who obstructed his investigation.

Fortunately, Inspector Jago was looking in the other direction just then, watching the crowds who pressed homewards from their day of celebration along the royal route. The postal manager stepped to one side. Holmes had him covered with the gun in one hand and was rifling the rows of wooden pigeonholes in which messages and small packages awaited collection. He drew them out by handfuls, glanced at them, and threw them on the floor. Finally he shouted at the terrified postal official, received a reply, threw open the door, and strode in our direction again.

‘For God’s sake, Holmes!’

‘I am told that I have seen every telegram or package that is awaiting collection. Not one! Not one item here that is bulky enough to be what we seek. Someone has got them!’

‘Not Colonel Moriarty,’ I said reassuringly. ‘He could hardly have been here long enough before we arrived to enter the office and leave again. Lemonnier, under whatever name they have agreed, is another matter.’

Inspector Jago had evidently paid little attention to what Holmes was saying. He now spoke without turning to us.

‘Well now,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s a thing!’

The minutehand on the large four-sided clock on the girders above us approached the half hour. We followed his gaze.

‘Now there is a curious thing,’ he said. ‘That grizzled man wearing a livery cape coming towards the steps down to the washrooms—he has a Robert Heath livery cape, just as a cabman might. No harm in that. But where it hangs open, see if that isn’t a silk surplice shirt underneath, such as only a gentleman would wear. He doesn’t try to look a gentleman, to be sure, and yet he happens to be carrying a Jenner & Knewstub leather travelling-bag. A most expensive item with compartments for clothing, shaving brushes, and all else that a real toff might require.’

‘One thing certain,’ said Holmes peremptorily, ‘he is too short and too well-set to be Colonel Moriarty. Meantime, we must keep watch here. For the moment you have your curious acquaintance bottled up, if you need him.’

The minute-hand on the large clock above us touched the next Roman numeral. Half past two. We were within sight of the ticket-barrier for that platform which served the ferry train. None of the passengers who had filed through showed the least resemblance to our prey.

‘And behold!’ said Inspector Jago presently. ‘Our man has come up again with his livery cape still on, his surplice shirt, but without his expensive travelling-bag. Unless I am mistaken, he is making for the cab rank. I think, however, he is not a cabdriver but a passenger in a hurry.’

Jago turned and looked hard at two men reading newspapers on a passengers’ waiting bench. I had not noticed them there when we arrived, nor had I noticed them arrive since, so unobtrusive were their movements. Now they rose separately and set off in the wake of the livery cape.

Holmes, Jago, and I watched the iron-railed space within which the steps led down to the steam and marble of the washrooms. There was a cloakroom for the deposit of luggage down there, and the explanation of Jago’s curiosity might be as simple as that. I waited for the first sign of a red tunic, but I waited in vain. It was Holmes who moved first. His target was a man in black city coat and trousers with a silk hat and silver-knobbed ebony stick. It was only at a second glance that I saw that he carried a Jenner & Knewstub overnight bag in his left hand.

I should not have known him as Colonel Moriarty, though he was of the same height. The silk hat disguised something of the bulging forehead; a pair of heavily rimmed spectacles gave him a studious air that somehow brought forward the deep-set eyes. He had a dark moustache and was walking in a curiously determined manner.

At the top of the steps from the underground cloakrooms, he swung away from us rapidly and approached the revolving door of the Charing Cross Hotel. We took up the pursuit, striding at a little distance behind him. As the door turned slowly, we were just in time to see him enter the ground-floor lift. The lift-boy pressed a button. Holmes sprang up the stairs, striving to keep level with our fugitive, while I stood guard at the ground-floor entrance. Jago was to take the second lift to the top of the building so that our man should be cut off from above. Then, to my consternation, the first lift, which had been ascending, began abruptly to come down from no higher than the second floor. The man must still be in it. The result was that my two companions had overshot the mark without knowing it and I must face this maniac alone. My hand went to my pocket. Then I stopped and recalled that Holmes had my revolver.

I braced myself for the struggle, grateful that I had not forgotten all my tactics from years of playing rugger for Blackheath. As I watched and listened, the lift rumbled to ground-floor level and then, without a pause, continued to descend. We had completely misjudged our levels for it was now dropping to the lower side entrance of the hotel, coming out into Villiers Street. Our man had stranded the three of us. Yet I was still sure he had not seen us. This charade was a final precaution in order to throw off the scent anyone who might be tracking him unobserved.

The next point where he might be caught was at the entrance to the platform for the three o’clock ferry train to Folkestone. The race began once more. It was now twenty minutes to three and the three o’clock ferry train must be preparing for departure.

‘Leave all this!’ Holmes shouted to me, as he came back down the stairs, gesturing at the cream and raspberry decor of the grand hotel.

As we came out into the station concourse, I said, ‘We shall catch him at the platform for the Continental Ferry Train.’

‘No! That is what he will expect us to do!’

‘What then?’

‘Every train from here crosses the short distance across the river bridge to Waterloo Station and stops before it goes on elsewhere. He still has time to catch a suburban stopping train in five or ten minutes, alighting a few minutes later at Waterloo, while we are left guarding the platform here. Then he may take the ferry train from Waterloo—or any other train that will carry him to Folkestone or Dover. We should still be waiting here. Or at Waterloo when it is too late. We must catch him now.’

‘But there will be police at all the stations.’

‘Good God, man! From Waterloo, he can get to any station in London or the rest of the country.’

‘There will be police everywhere by now, surely.’ He heaved a sigh, drawing breath.

‘At this moment, there are perhaps half a dozen people in London who know the Queen of the Night is missing—and three of them are here. The entire Metropolitan police force is probably still guarding His Majesty’s ceremonial route.’

By now Jago had come up with us. Far away, at the shabbiest platform of Charing Cross Station, stood the shabbiest train, a collection of ancient carriages destined for a modest suburban itinerary that would wind slowly to New Cross, Lewisham, Blackheath, and the stations of Southeast London. Passing the ticket-collector at the barrier, I noticed a tall athletic man in a brown tweed overcoat, carrying a leather Jenner & Knewstub bag.

How easily a reversible coat can change from City black to the brown tweed of a racing man on his way home! Holmes took off at a sprint, Jago and I a little behind him. The iron gate was closed now and a whistle had blown. Jago shouted a command at the ticket-collector as the train began to move forward slowly across Hungerford Bridge, the brown tide of the river turning silver in the afternoon sun. Holmes hurdled the gate and raced ahead of us, but it seemed we had lost sight of our man. Then I heard a crack, rather like the detonation of a lifeboat maroon. The revolver, whatever type it might be, was a heavier gun than mine. I calculated that it had been fired at us from the forward carriage of the slowly moving suburban train.

There was no time to run back and communicate an urgent message to the railway police at Waterloo, for the train would arrive there and leave again before the signal was received. If we lost him now, Colonel Moriarty might alight at any station among the homeward crowds, drop down to the track far from anywhere, and be in London, in England, in Europe—for that matter, in Timbuctoo.

Holmes had jumped from the platform and was running along the track at the rear of the train. He was sheltered at this angle from the aim of the marksman, but then, as the wheels gathered speed, he was exposed once more to two further bullets from Colonel Moriarty’s revolver. The sound of the shots was hardly audible above the iron rumbling of the wheels, but one passed close to Jago. If I heard correctly, three shots had been fired so far and three more live rounds would probably remain in the chambers of the gun. If the colonel could kill, maim, or even drive us back, he had the world before him and a racing start.

The several carriages of the train, with a fussy-sounding little engine at their head, rolled for ward across the ironwork and planking of the river bridge. In the sunlight, Waterloo Bridge to our left was heavy with road traffic; Westminster Bridge to the right was still decked with red, white, and blue bunting for the royal occasion. I knew we should never find Colonel Moriarty in such crowds as besieged the platforms at Waterloo by this hour. If we failed, I thought, no one else was even looking for him.

Just then a metal signal arm on a tall gantry, which had so far been pointing earthward, rose to the horizontal with a heavy clang, and its light changed from green to red. The train slowed down with a jangling of buffers and a squeal of iron wheels on steel. It halted almost in the center of the long bridge in a long silence. Whether it was waiting for an empty platform at Waterloo or whether the signalman in his box had noticed three of us on the line, I had no idea.

With Sherlock Holmes in the lead, my revolver in his hand, we moved forward, our backs almost pressed against the coachwork to give the smallest angle of fire to our adversary. There was a shout from the engine driver.

‘Get off the track!’

It was not directed at us, but at someone on the far side of the train. From ahead of us, though out of sight, came a sound of feet on gravel.

‘He’s making a run for it!’ Jago called out.

‘Not with a fully loaded travelling-bag in his hand,’ said Holmes quietly.

We skirted round the rear coach to take our enemy from behind. As we came out from cover, I was prepared to throw myself down to avoid a bullet from Colonel Moriarty. Yet there was no sound of gunfire or even of a voice. The summer afternoon was as quiet as if we had been on some remote beach or mountainside. No train came in either direction, and for the first time I realised that someone must have seen us and ordered all traffic across the bridge to be stopped. I now saw a most extraordinary sight. The tall figure in the brown tweed coat was standing at the parapet of the bridge, facing downstream. The black leather travelling-bag was in his hands. Or rather, he was holding it open and turning it upside down. I had a brief glimpse of shaving brushes and soap-stick, clothes-brush and razor, a pajama case and a tight wad of clothing tumbling helter-skelter into the current of the river below.

It might have been an act or surrender or probably the quickest way of discarding the bag that weighed him down. He took the gun from his pocket. As he raised it, I jumped for cover of the stationary carriages. But he had turned toward the far end of the bridge ahead of us and fired. Why had he not fired at us?