Becoming Holmes (27 page)

“Come, Satan,” says Crew, indicating Sherlock to the snake. He sets his pistol on the floor and bends down to unleash the reptile. In an instant, it is free! The anaconda slithers toward the bed. Holmes’s eyes grow huge as he gapes at it. He begins to whimper. He cannot stop. Terror overcomes him. He thinks of his mother.

“You have much to do in life,” he hears her say. When he does, he stops crying. He stiffens himself and turns on his brain. As weak as he is, he cannot give up. He looks at Crew’s face, drool now coming from his lips as he anticipates seeing the anaconda crush Malefactor’s greatest enemy. Crew steps forward with the snake, to get a closer look.

Don’t give up
.

In his fear and his feeble state, he had assumed that he had no way of fighting back. But now he thinks about Crew setting the gun down on the floor.
Why did he not retrieve it once he had loosed the snake? If I could get to my feet, he would not have a weapon
. He remembers Crew embracing him as he slammed him down onto the marble bed.
Why did he do
that? He feels no affection for anyone
. He thinks of Crew caressing his arms, and it comes to him.
My horsewhip!
Crew was feeling for his horsewhip up his sleeve.
He has seen me use it before. He knows where I keep it
. But it wasn’t there.
That had relaxed him. That’s why he thought he could put the gun down
. It is five or ten strides behind him. Until now, he has kept his eyes glued on Sherlock.
He thinks I don’t have my weapon. He is being careless, unguarded. He may even look away
. Sherlock locks his eyes onto Crew. And, just as he expects, the weird one turns away for a second, almost as if to see the expressions on his snakes’ faces, as if they were a bizarre audience whose reaction to this horrible death he wants to observe.

The anaconda is within a few feet.

I must time it right
.

Summoning every ounce of strength he has left, Sherlock reaches down and seizes his horsewhip, which he had put in a different place tonight, into his brand new boots that Bell had given him, that ride almost halfway up his calf. It had struck him as a much better place to conceal his great weapon.

He staggers to his feet as fast as he can, whip in hand. Both the snake and Crew, whose head has snapped back to his victim, freeze. Sherlock cracks it at the monster constrictor, wrapping it around its big head in a strangling grip. The snake writhes in pain and pulls the whip from Sherlock’s hand with its fangs. Its strength is inhuman. It coils around the whip in a frenzy, squeezing itself, as though it intends to crush its own body.

“No!” cries Crew and rushes to it. His interest in Sherlock evaporates. Holmes drops from the marble bed and rushes away, dancing through the other snakes that now dart and strike at him. One bite will kill him before he even reaches London Bridge, several will make his insides explode. But he gets by the snakes, desperate not only to live, but to destroy this villain and his powerful master. In seconds he is up the steps and slamming out the door.

“Satan! My baby!” he hears Crew cry out.

It would normally take Holmes nearly half an hour to get back over the river and to Trafalgar Square just south of Denmark Street. This time, adrenaline pumping through his veins like a waterfall, he makes it in twenty minutes. But he doesn’t go north there. He swings west to Scotland Yard.

His plan is still in motion.

25
TWO DOWN, ONE TO GO

I
t is past midnight, the early hours of the morning, black and foggy on the streets of London. Even Whitehall Street looks deserted and creepy. But Sherlock barely notices. He gets to police headquarters, stumbles up the stone steps and thunders through the thick wooden doors. His face must be as pale as a ghost’s, for the night sergeant, who knows him well, looks alarmed at his appearance; and this, despite his natty attire.

“Master Holmes, what is wrong?” he cries.

“I need Lestrade!”

Young G. Lestrade is not a great detective, nor will he ever be, but he uses what brains he has to get ahead. Those brains told him long ago to make a friend of Sherlock Holmes. They also told him to be sure that Holmes has at least one other friend at Scotland Yard, in case Lestrade himself is not about when something matters. That individual is the night sergeant. This young man, not much older than G. Lestrade and low himself on the totem pole of police status, has been told in no uncertain terms – with the inducement of Lestrade’s future influence to motivate him – that the brilliant half-Jew is never to be
turned away if he arrives with private information for G.L.

The sergeant doesn’t hesitate. “I shall send a boy!” he says and dispatches one with great haste to young Lestrade’s new rooms in a lodging house in Chelsea, the first bachelor quarters of his life. The lad flies out into the night with shillings for a fast hansom cab clutched in his hand.

In less than an hour, a bleary-eyed Lestrade appears in his cramped office in Scotland Yard to see a very well-dressed but pale Sherlock Holmes moving with the energy of a hungry wolf in tight little circles on his floor.

“Holmes, what has happened?”

“Nothing. Not yet. It is about to.”

“What are you saying?”

“Bring a man, a big man, a very big man, as tough as nails, and come with me. Now!”

“Come with you where and for what purpose?”

“I can prove who murdered Grimsby.”

“Really?”

“I can snare him for you tonight. And when I do, I will be delivering into your hands not only a despicable villain who has already murdered countless others in his brief life, but someone who will, I guarantee, kill many more if we do not snuff him out!”

Sherlock’s eyes are blazing. It almost frightens Lestrade. He often thinks that his will to fight crime is Holmes’s equal, but at moments like these, he knows it is not.

“And furthermore, I believe I can, with this arrest, put before the courts someone else – the spider who spins the greatest web of crime in all of London, who plans to
dominate it in future years, mastermind it, be the power behind the murder, the robbery, and the moral contamination of great masses of our populace!”

“Sherlock that is a mighty –”

“Grimsby is dead. Crew is in his lair surrounded by evidence that can destroy him. Malefactor awaits my final stroke! He will be there, tonight, I know it!”

“Calm down, my friend.”

The cords are bulging in Sherlock’s neck.

“Come with me! Now!”

“Where, Holmes?”

“To the Cross Bones Graveyard in Southwark!”

Lestrade is well aware of that satanic place. The very mention of it, uttered with such vehemence by the boy, makes him start. It is two o’clock in the morning, a witching hour, pitch black outside.

“Cross … Cross Bones?”

“Come with me, Lestrade, and make your career!”

Fifteen minutes later, Holmes, Lestrade, and the burliest constable on the night shift at Scotland Yard, a massive man named Landless with a bulldog head and three feet across the shoulders, are in a black police coach heading down Fleet Street toward London Bridge. The young detective can’t believe he has been convinced to do this. Neither can he believe that he has taken the step of securing a revolver with a six-bullet chamber for this raid. But Sherlock is adamant
about what awaits them. He is certain too about the reward. Nothing, he is insisting, will strike a greater blow against crime in this century than this operation tonight. Lestrade thinks of Grimsby as an inconsequential little man, Crew of only slightly greater interest, and Malefactor as a retired young street thug, now long gone from the city. But if Holmes says they are much more, they almost certainly are.

“Lestrade,” says Sherlock just before they reach Southwark, “if we are to survive tonight –”

“Survive?”

“And live to be adults pursuing our noble careers, we must not be longstanding friends.”

“Pardon me?”

“It is best, in the future, that we act strictly as professionals without conjoined pasts. You did not know me in my youth, nor I you. It will serve us well.”

There are times when the young detective wonders if Sherlock Holmes is insane. And yet, here Lestrade is, following him into mortal danger.

When they arrive, Lestrade can barely bring himself to look at Cross Bones Graveyard, let alone enter it. The police never go near it; no one does, as far as he knows. But when he glances through the bars of the gates and sees the crypt that Holmes
points out, he can’t help being intrigued. He is almost convinced that he should set aside his fears. When Sherlock climbs onto the gate and leaps over, he knows he must follow. Landless boosts him up and stands behind him. He edges over the top, over the rusty spears, and drops down gingerly onto the putrid grounds. Landless follows with a thud. The giant man has the sort of thick, shaved head that has the same expression on both sides – both his face and neck are impassive, emotionless, as if they are made of hard muscle.

No one has followed them. Or is that true?

As Sherlock approaches the crypt, he motions for the other two to be silent. They are actually tiptoeing. Lestrade, unbeknownst to his companions, is fighting to keep from vomiting. The smells are overpowering him, the knowledge that he walks upon layers of rotting bodies unnerves him, and the sight of decomposing skulls unmans him. He is happy to reach the cold marble surface of the crypt and set one shaking hand against it; the other grips his revolver at the ready.

Sherlock is sure that Crew will still be in the crypt. The villain fears no man – he will not care that Holmes knows where he lives. Nor does he have any idea that Sherlock has the evidence to convict him of Grimsby’s murder.

The boy has a plan. Now he just needs to execute it.

When they reach the hole in the wall, Lestrade is instructed to peer in. He does so for a long time and when he finally pulls his face back, the startled look in his eyes indicates that Crew is back on his marble bed with his extraordinary snakes. Sherlock takes a glance too. Satan looks to have survived his desperate grapple with the horsewhip, his
deathly attack upon himself, and Crew is virtually purring as he lies amongst his colorful reptilian charges.