The Secret Fiend (14 page)

His father, a scientist, taught him how to be an observing machine, and Sigerson Bell has taken the teaching even further. The old man likes to instruct him to be alert about everything at all times, including being attacked.

“You know the expression, my boy, have eyes in the back of your head? You, sir, if you are going to proceed with this future of yours, must have eyes everywhere: in the back of your legs, your spine, your hands, even peering out from your derriere! Learn to see, feel, hear, smell, and taste simultaneously and at all times. Be ever vigilant! It is a tenet of the Bellitsu practitioner!”

But Sherlock is so carefree after this happy school day that he leaves Snowfields, whistling that tune, without the least sense of vigilance. It is a decidedly unusual state for him, but he is enjoying it. He doesn’t play any mental games as he strolls, doesn’t try to exercise his brain. Instead, the powerful mind of Sherlock Holmes is startlingly blank.

And that, it turns out, isn’t a good thing.

There are many alleys winding out from the little lanes near the school. Other than the railway station, Snowfields itself, a workhouse, and a few broken-down residences, this is an industrial area. Tradesmen are everywhere. They dump things in these alleys.

He doesn’t notice the two smallish working-class men with their caps pulled down coming toward him until they have actually gripped him by both arms and lifted him into
the air. In seconds, he is pinned against the wall at the back of an alley that takes a sharp turn after it leaves the street. He is out of view of pedestrians.

And the two hardworking “men” who are now slamming him against the wall … are in disguise.
Irregulars!
He looks up and sees Malefactor walking toward him with Crew and Grimsby on either side. The boss carries a big iron bar about four feet long. All three begin to remove their coats. Malefactor motions for the two who hold Holmes to leave.

“Stand by the entrance. Do not let anyone come in here.”

He turns back to Holmes, looking angry, so angry that he is shaking.

“If you live through this beating, you will know how to conduct the rest of your life. And it shan’t be as any sort of detective! If you do not live, I apologize to the fishes in the Thames for such a scrawny meal.”

Grimsby lets out a cackle. His face is red and he is perspiring. He smiles like a lad about to enter a circus. He can barely contain his excitement. Beside him, Crew is impassive.

“I told you I would kill you, Sherlock Holmes. There will be little interest in a search for an insignificant half-breed like you. Lestrade will be happy to ignore it: your childish competition with Scotland Yard has given me
such
an opportunity. This … is a free kill!”

Sherlock can see he means it and is suddenly terrified. His stomach burns, his heart begins to race, and he feels as though he may be sick or soil himself.
This is how it is going
to end for me. Child of a poor Jewish man … and a beautiful English lady, dead at age fourteen, nothing accomplished.

“If you struggle, it will go worse with you.”

“I will beat you with my fists, Jew-boy,” growls Grimsby, “but if you calls out, I will smash your ’ead against that wall until your brains spill. The boss is going to break your legs and your arms and your ribs with that there railway bar. Take the blows that bust your bones and ’e may just leave you crippled … maybe!” He giggles again.

“What have I done? I’m not involved in anything!” cries Sherlock. He is almost weeping. “That report in the papers was –”

“I told you that chaos was good for me. The Greek myths, Christianity, even your Jewish lies, say the world began in utter chaos. That’s our natural state. We should return to it. I admire the chaos theories in mathematics about numbers and equations spinning out of control. If you knew of them, you wouldn’t…. You like order.”

“I am doing nothing, now! I am refusing people who want me to help. I promise you!”

“He’s afraid, Master, he’s afraid!” Grimsby is jumping up and down, a vein protruding out on his forehead. Quivering, Holmes sets himself as best he can against the little villain, turning his hips toward him. But as he does, Crew comes up and grabs the boy’s arms, wrenching them behind his back. Sherlock can smell the dye in his hair. He is a powerful boy indeed. Before Holmes can try to bring Crew down with a Bellitsu move, Grimsby has released a punch, aiming for the solar plexus, intending to start proceedings
by rendering Sherlock helpless. Holmes has but an instant to tighten his abdomen.

“My boy!” cried Sigerson Bell just last week. “Should you ever be in the unenviable position of receiving a blow to the midsection, or a punch in the gut, as it were … you are out of luck!” The old man had laughed so hard that tears had come to his eyes. “Just playing the fool, Master Holmes, playing the fool. Now … strike me!”

And with that, he invited the boy to pound him in the abdomen. Sherlock tapped him lightly and the old man yelled at him to do it harder, whereupon Holmes added a slight bit of power to his blow, whereupon the apothecary cursed the boy with a truly revolting epithet – something to do with his ancestors resembling the refuse of a particularly repulsive beast – thus angering the lad so that he struck his old friend with everything he had … and discovered that he couldn’t harm him. Sigerson Bell’s gut, when engaged, was as hard as the pillars of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“Clench the abdominal muscles at precisely the right moment, my child! And actually step into the blow! It is an art in itself!”

Sherlock attempts to employ it as Grimsby delivers his punch, which arrives in a split second. His stomach muscles
are barely locked and hardened, and he has only begun to move toward the flying fist, but it is enough. Holmes doesn’t buckle; he doesn’t lose all the air in his body; he isn’t left lying on the ground. Grimsby is astonished.

“Stand back!” commands Malefactor. Though the iron bar is heavy, he swings it as though it were a twig. Sherlock doesn’t have time to be amazed at his enemy’s strength. Digging in his heels, he shoves Crew back and is able to move him a few inches. The bar misses and connects with the wall, right in front of his thigh bone, making a dull clanging noise and chipping out a piece of stone.

Crew, pushed up against the wall by Holmes’ maneuver, shoved so hard that most opponents would have buckled, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t utter a sound. His body feels as hard as the stone wall itself.

“Things are heating up in this city and that is good for my ventures,” says Malefactor, pulling the bar from the wall. “Were I to allow you to have a healthy body and mind, you would soon not be able to resist being involved in chasing my Spring Heeled Jacks again! We have the Bobbies pre-occupied. But you would change that! After I warned you, you still kept interfering. You have proven to me that I must eliminate you. This is the perfect time to do it. You know too much about me, far too much! You are a thorn in my side, Sherlock Holmes, and if I do not stop you now … you will always be!” He glances at Crew. “Ready him!”

Crew swings Holmes around, cracking his head against the wall. The blinding pain shivers through his body right
down to his toes. Crew swings him back and Malefactor lifts the iron bar to strike, to break his right thigh bone.

But the blow never comes. Someone clutches the weapon on the back swing.

The Spring Heeled Jack!

Its wings are widespread.

While both Grimsby and Crew gape at it, Malefactor turns and boots it in the midsection, knocking it across the alley and onto the ground.

“You are a fool!” cries the crime boss and advances toward it. It lies there gasping, one of its arms folded across its chest, as if wrapped in a sling inside its costume.

“Police!” it shouts. “POLICE!” That freezes the criminals. Malefactor motions and all three run.

“The next time, you will be dead!” Malefactor shouts at Sherlock.

The alley grows quiet. Only the sounds in the streets outside are heard, the distant buzz of Southwark.

“You ’ave a goose egg, you ’ave.”

John Silver is sitting on the ground, half-dressed in his silly Spring Heeled Jack uniform, smiling up at Holmes. He is rubbing the arm that Sherlock broke, which is indeed wrapped in a sling under his crude costume.

“Thank you, Master Silver.”

“Not at all. I is glad to be of service. I ’ave been thinking about a great many things lately, overhauling ’em, I ’ave, Master ’olmes, and I want to change the way I does things … just like you said. So I thought I’d start this afternoon. I lives east of ’ere in Rotherhithe. So I was a
coming this way to start events off, to find Miss Beatrice coming home to the hatter’s shop, to apologize to ’er. I was going to show ’er the costume to let ’er know ’ow ridiculous it was … and I am. Then I was going to throw it in a dustbin as she watched. The police didn’t take it from me, you know, didn’t bother. That Lestrade chap, ’e just smiled when Miss Beatrice and I told ’im about you and ’ow you ’elped ’er. I thought that peculiar. I ’ad told ’im what I did in order to raise you up a bit, because I felt wery guilty about things all of a sudden. You had been so brave and I such a fool, really. I ’ad got to thinking, straight off, when we was waitin’ for the Peelers to come that night, ’ow awful I’d been to you over the years. I felt ashamed of everything, so I wanted to do something nice for you. I don’t care if you is a Jew, Sherlock. Mr. Disraeli, ’e is one too. ’e is ’elping folks like me, I figure. ’e got the vote for me family. ’e is showing us all, ’e is. I don’t imagine any of us is so different inside.”

“No, I don’t imagine we are.”

“Well, I ’eard a commotion in ’ere, saw the two ragged boys at the entrance, ’eard that tall one with the tail coat and the top ’at shoutin’ nasty things at you. So I slipped on me costume and came at them two little guards all of a sudden-like and they runs! Then I comes in ’ere. That tall one sure kicked me good. I ’ad it in mind to fight them. But I thought better of it when I felt ’is blow. And when I saw the looks of them two with ’im.”

Silver rubs his stomach.

Moments later, as they leave the alley and head toward
Borough High Street, big John grabs Sherlock by the arm. He is looking back in the direction of Snowfields School.

“That’s Beatrice, ain’t it?”

Down Snowfields Road, way down near the school, Beatrice Leckie and her friend Louise are talking to the headmaster as he locks the door. The headmaster points toward Sherlock and Silver, or at least in their direction. They are so far away that the girls don’t see them, but they begin to approach, eyes downcast, talking earnestly.

“She is a wery loverly one, she is,” says Silver.

“Yes … she is.”

“’ave you ever really conversed with her? I means, really sat down and ’ad a gab?”

“Well, we’ve chatted a little about –”

“You should. I did once, just once. It was when me guvna broke ’is back in an accident, building the new tracks out of London Bridge Station a few years past. Some rails fell off a wagon and landed on ’im.”

“I didn’t know that. I am sorry.”

“Well, she ’eard, and she spoke to me. Sat right down and gabbed for the longest time. It was wonderful, it was.”

Sherlock looks down the street at Beatrice. She still doesn’t see them. She has pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and is talking to Louise, waving it around as if frustrated about something.

“She gave me some money, she did.”

“What? Her family can’t spare any money.”

“I knows. But she wouldn’t ’ear of me family not ’avin it.”

Beatrice looks up and spots Sherlock. Those black eyes glow.

“She is a political sort, you know.”

“Nonsense. She doesn’t know a thing about it. She is an old-fashioned girl.”

“No, sir, she does. She says to me that day, she says that there should be money from the government for navies, workin’ men like my papa who gets injuries, that no man in England should go without money if he is ’urt, none should starve either, even if they don’t ’ave work. She says to me that things need to change in this country, and that the rich need to pay some of what they ’ave to ’elp the rest.”