The Dragon Turn (2 page)

Then a sight even more sensational than the dragon appears
inside
the cage
with
the beast. A woman, wearing a headdress and a purple Egyptian robe that is tied back to reveal a skimpy white muslin costume underneath, rises to her feet on long, bare legs and stands in front of the dragon! She looks terrified.
Hemsworth has put his assistant
into the cage with the creature!
Her hands are tied behind her back, her mouth gagged and bound. She cries out, but
help!
is the only word that is recognizable. The screams increase from the audience. Women faint, falling back into their seats. Irene squeezes Sherlock’s hand.

Hemsworth turns to the giant lizard and produces a sword out of thin air. “In days of old, the venerable saint slew the dragon at the very moment it approached the princess,” he cries, “saving both her … and his people!”

The dragon is trying to get at the woman. It is shackled and tethered, but as it strains it seems about to break loose. Will it devour her alive, here on the stage in front of all these people?

“BE GONE!” shouts Hemsworth, shaking his sword at the creature.

Everything — the dragon, the princess, and the cage — vanishes from the stage.

The applause is thunderous.

London has never considered Alistair Hemsworth to be a great magician. No one would rank him among any of the legends now plying their arts in this golden age of magic on the city’s stages. Yet, this year, throngs of spectators are coming to see him in never-ending queues.

He was not, like most of the others, born to the profession. In fact, just a few years earlier, he was known, if known at all, as an adventurer. Not a great man like Burton or Speke,
the likes of whom braved darkest Africa, made significant discoveries, and brought glory to the empire. He was a different and lower sort — an explorer whose exploits were printed in short notes on the back pages of
The Times of London
, a dealer in human cargo who found freaks in Oriental jungles for English showmen. It was even whispered that he sometimes dealt in the ignominious and illegal trading of slaves … of any skin color.

His dream, however, he has been reporting to the newspapers during this season of his great success — has always been to be a famed illusionist. An amateur magician since childhood, he long ago vowed that he would become the theatrical sensation that he is today.

But his show is built on a single moment. Everyone in London knows it.

Sherlock and Irene had sat through his fumbling attempt at levitating a female audience member, his awkward sawing and cutting up of another lady, and the amateurish removal of his own head, an obviously fake, porcelain object, severed from his trunk by his beautiful African assistant, and then nearly dropped on the stage boards as he tried to hold it aloft.

But no one laughed, no one booed. Not a word was spoken. Everyone waited for the dragon. And when it came, it didn’t disappoint.

The instant the beast and its “victim” vanish, the lights come up. Hemsworth is gone too. There is a buzz in the crowd,
voices filling the grand, Egyptian-themed amphitheater with its rich red curtains and white pillars.

“Come!” says Irene, taking Sherlock by the hand again, something he has gotten used to lately; something, he has to admit, he greatly enjoys.

Bit by bit, over the preceding eighteen months, ever since he was involved in the case of the Spring Heeled Jack, he has been allowing her back into his life. On the night he solved that crime, a stunning chance meeting on the streets with Prime Minister Disraeli had ushered in other changes too. Sherlock had been nearly undone by the frightening events of that evening, but the great man urged him to keep pursuing his dreams. And so, instead of staying out of dangerous criminal cases until he was older, as he had been telling himself he should, or rashly throwing himself into them, as he seemed driven to do, he decided to try a different tack: continue to apply himself and his great gifts, even at this young age, to the cause of justice. (After all, this will be his life’s work, so he must train.) But until he becomes a man, he must do so only at arm’s length. Thus he began, that day, to help the police whenever he could, but in a new way: by investigating crimes from a distance … and then dropping clues to Inspector Lestrade’s son (who happily promised to keep his source to himself).

Sherlock and his employer have had a marvelous time with this at the old apothecary shop. Mr. Bell is turning out to be a cunning parlor-room detective indeed, though the boy often thinks that the old man dearly misses helping him collar the criminals in person. Bell is fond of recounting his
hand-to-hand combat with the Spring Heeled Jack on the cobblestones of a Bethnel Green rookery.

“My boy! It was a fine bit of Bellitsu, was it not? I believe he must have soiled himself with fear when he saw me approaching, warrior cloth wrapped to my cranium, warrior tights gripping my manly thighs, the muscles in my buttocks tensed like the coils of —”

“We don’t need to retell that part, sir.”

“… We don’t?”

“No sir, too much information always spoils a good story.”

“Yes, well, you may be correct, my young knight. Be that as it may, it was indeed a tight spot we were in that night and I well recall that …”

On and on he would go, until Sherlock would get up and leave the room, the old man still holding forth. More often than not, Sigerson Bell would be fast asleep when the boy returned.

Holmes has matured a great deal in many other ways during the past year or so. He is now a pupil-teacher most of the time at Snowfields School, and a student for only a special class or two. These days, he is three or four inches taller than the statuesque Irene. She says she likes that very much. And though she also says that she wishes he were still chasing criminals, she understands that his distance from such endeavors, his more careful style of life, is bringing them back together.
He isn’t courting danger anymore, so she is safe with him. She also appreciates that he no longer scoffs at her “improper” ambitions. Irene Doyle is not just singing at home this year. She is taking lessons and has even, once or twice, gotten onto a stage in some of the more respectable music halls in the suburbs and actually sung in public. Neither her father nor her much-pampered stepbrother, Paul, knows of it. She isn’t giving up on anything she believes in, not even her new, radical political views. Though, in many ways, she is different from when Sherlock first met her, she has always had a deep sense of conviction about everything she does. She was like that when she visited criminals in jails with her father and helped the poor, and she will be like that forever. She has an unconquerable spirit.

Sherlock can feel that energy as she pulls him along the row of seats toward the aisle at The Egyptian Hall.

“Come, let’s meet him!”

“Who?”

“Hemsworth, of course.”

“But —”

“How do you think I acquired these tickets? Last night at an audition I met someone who knows him. I did very well — charmed them, I’d say — and the manager gave me a card afterward. He told me that if I showed it to an employee here after the show, Hemsworth would see us. I thought I’d surprise you. A clever man is always of interest, is he not?”

She is right. Such an opportunity isn’t to be missed. It would be exciting to speak to the illusionist just moments
after he has made his famous dragon appear for a fashionable crowd.
How
, thinks Sherlock,
does he do it?

The man at the backstage door allows them in the moment Irene displays the card. Sherlock is surprised at the scene inside. He expects to see a hive of all sorts of people backstage — perhaps Hemsworth’s exotic female assistant, possibly the musicians leaving the orchestra pit, backstage workers, newspaper reporters, hangers-on or admirers waiting for a chance to speak to the great conjurer. But it is eerily quiet.
Is everyone kept away? Are there that many secrets backstage?
The young couple moves down a dim and empty hallway. It is so narrow that their shoulders almost touch the walls. The doorman slams the entrance behind them, and the noise echoes in the corridor.

“I don’t like enclosed spaces,” says Irene, gripping Sherlock’s arm.

They find “His Highness” Hemsworth’s dressing room, the one with the star on the door. There are low voices conversing inside. Holmes knocks. The voices stop and there is silence. “Just a moment!” cries the magician. The low voices resume, halt again, and then the door opens without warning, without the sound of footsteps, almost as if the illusionist has flown across the room. There he stands, his white adventurer’s suit glistening as if it were under a jungle sun — sprinkled with something glittery to create the effect — his red hair slicked back, his big mutton chops wet with perspiration, and his mustache and goatee primed with oil. For some reason, perhaps it is the heavy stage make up, his face looks false, like an arranged visage on a wax figure in
Madame Tussaud’s Museum. He is tall and barrel-chested, holds himself erect, and gestures to them with the thick, strong hands of an explorer, not the delicate digits of a magician. His blue eyes sparkle as his voice booms.

“My, what a handsome couple! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Irene explains.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Hollingswood, an excellent man. He must feel you have talent, my dear.”

Irene blushes.

“I might be in a position to help you, young lady, if Hollingswood thinks you are to be helped. Perhaps I might have you sing to open my show soon? It would be nice to have some variety. I will consider it.” Irene’s eyes grow large. “Come and see me again.” His smile becomes magnetic.

There is a moment of awkward silence. Sherlock and Irene had expected the artiste to invite them into the room, but he remains standing in the doorway obviously intent on speaking to them here, politely but briefly. Holmes can’t see past him, but there is no evidence of the owner of the other low voice that had been heard just moments before. Irene doesn’t care about that. She is flushed with excitement.

Then there is another voice, coming from where they entered just moments ago. It sounds familiar.

“I don’t care whether he is ready for me or not, I am ready for him. He will come with us, in costume or out!”

Down the hallway march five men at a brisk pace. Three are uniformed Bobbies with their truncheons out and serious looks on their faces. And with them are a father
and son, both dressed in brown checked suits with bowler hats, the elder with a full mustache and the younger with one in training.

“Sherlock Holmes?” sputters Inspector Lestrade, coming to a sudden halt. “What, in God’s name, are you doing here? You’ve grown … you’ve …”

“Miss?” gasps Lestrade Junior, who hasn’t seen Irene for a while, “Miss Doyle … why … you … you look charming this evening.” He glances at Sherlock and nods. Irene smiles at him.

“It has been a long time, Master Holmes,” continues the Inspector, “thank goodness.”

The younger Lestrade looks at the ground with a guilty expression.

“Yes, it has, sir.” Holmes grits his teeth.