The Secret Fiend (5 page)

About four hours later, the pitch-black stillness of the shop is broken by a noise overhead.

Sigerson Bell is on his feet.
Sherlock listens for the sound of his chamber pot being slid out from under his bed, for the familiar noise of pee spurting in irregular squirts into that vessel. But there’s nothing of that sort. Instead, the boy hears the old man putting on his clothes! Moments later, he is coming down the stairs! Sherlock hears him putter through the lab, knock into something and still it. Then, there’s a low voice.

“Dog flatulence!”

Silence.

The footsteps move again, through the lab, into the front room. The outside door squeaks open and closes.

MORE SECRETS

S
herlock has his trousers, waistcoat, and frock coat on in seconds. He only glances into his little mirror, pats his hair into place in a rush. He gets out the door and spies the old man way down Crown Street, heading toward the river. Bell wisely avoids the dangerous Seven Dials and keeps going straight south to The Strand. Sherlock has to stay on his toes because the old man looks back several times, as if concerned that he is being followed. He has something tucked under an arm.

At The Strand, so unlike itself now because it is nearly deserted, the boy follows Bell as he heads east toward the Old City. They pass St. Paul’s Cathedral, bare-foot waifs lying on its steps. Only the odd hansom cab passes, that signature London sound of clopping hooves now a lonely noise. It is still too early even for the working class to be starting out, and not a single milkwoman is yet in sight. Sherlock keeps his eyes open for shadows lurking down the alleyways. Malefactor and his gang could beat you, strip you, and clean out your pockets in a flash, unobserved at this hour. Respectable, sober folks know to keep from the streets in the early morning. Sherlock once had a sort of
admiration for Malefactor, but now despises him. He would just as soon have him arrested as speak to him.

Up ahead, Bell seems to have no worries. He scoots along, bent over, never looking side to side, just occasionally behind.
He is fearless
, thinks Sherlock. But anyone as skilled in the arts of self-defense as he, is frightened of no man. In fact, the boy pities any thug who might try to accost him.

They pass south of Cheapside and the old man swings down to Thames Street next to the river. Sherlock can smell it. The Tower of London looms up ahead, looking ominous against the black sky. The boy’s breath is evident in the cold night.

Bell stops suddenly, pulls the costume and mask out from under his arm as if readying it to put on, then scurries into one of those impossibly narrow streets in this ancient part of the city. Everything here is cramped, made for smaller people of a bygone era.

By the time Sherlock turns into the street, Bell has vanished.
He must have entered one of the buildings.
The boy begins examining them. They are block-like and jammed together, made of dark granite, gone black from centuries of grime and decades of soot. A few have business names on plaques, a barrister here, an exporter there. But one sign stops him in his tracks. It is unlike any other. There are no words, just a symbol containing a compass and a square joined together, with the large letter
G
in between. The door looks very heavy, curiously bolted from the outside.
Is it locked from the inside as well? If so, what a strange entrance.
And he thinks it especially so when he sees a dim light through the cracks – someone is in there! Somehow, that person can lock and unlock the outside bolt from the inside. The door also features remarkable decorations, carved right into it – a whole series of pyramids each with a single eye peering out. Should he enter? Sherlock carefully draws the bolt, then reaches out and grips the handle. Suddenly, the door swings open and just as suddenly, he is on the ground. Someone has taken his legs out from under him with a deft move of a foot and an expert push from a forearm. His assailant stands over him.

“My boy?”

His master is astride him … frantically throwing off a black and green costume.

“Mr. Bell?”

“What, in the name of Hermes, are you doing here?”

“One might well ask the same question of you, sir.”

The old man offers a hand and raises him to his feet.

“Yes, well, one might indeed, I suppose.” Bell glances back at his costume, now lying in the entrance behind him, and tries to kick it through the doorway. “You are such a curious lad. Let us step away down the street here and I shall explain.”

He is trying to get me away from the building.
Sherlock looks above the doorway to the roof, searching for a clue to its identity. He sees nothing that helps, but then notices the costume, still lying on the threshold, not quite all the way through the door.

“By all means,” says the boy. As the old man relaxes in response, turning his back to pick up the costume to throw it indoors, Sherlock makes a quick move, darts past Bell, and seizes the material. In an instant he is standing out in the street, several yards from the apothecary, examining it. It is mostly black, with stripes of green, but not really stripes – they are symbols of some sort, moons and suns, and more compasses and squares, more of those pyramids with eyes. Then he spots some lettering, written in a sort of Elizabethan calligraphy –
The Hermetic Order of the Sacred Dawn
.

“What?” says the boy aloud.

“I really wish you had not done that!” shouts Bell. He is advancing on the boy. He snatches the material from him and takes him by the collar. He drags him down the street and into an alleyway, looking right and left to make sure no one has followed them.

“I am required to kill you now.”

“What?”

“That is what I am required to do.”

“By whom?”

“By the Hermetic Order of the Sacred Dawn. You know of us now, you know our name, and you know that I am part of it.”

“And I know you are the Spring Heeled Jack!”

Sigerson Bell’s eyes look like they may pop out of his head.

“I’m what?”

“The Spring Heeled Jack!”

A smile spreads across Bell’s face. “You have always been a strange one, Sherlock Holmes. But now you’ve done it. You have officially gone and lost your marbles.”

“Say what you will … I am on to you.”

“Yes, yes, I am a fictional character from a Penny Dreadful magazine…. You have caught me!”

“Why did you attack Beatrice and her friend? Or did you dress up someone else to do it?”

“Ah!”

“What do you mean … ‘Ah!’”

“So that’s what it was! Her
vision
was of the Spring Heeled Jack.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Don’t pretend it is a surprise. I have caught you, red-handed. You have been using me, somehow. This was all set up. Why did you draw me into your employ in the first place?”

“Because I needed an assistant … and you are a wonderful young man, who thinks a little too highly of himself from time to time, full of troubles and indecision, yes, but a wonderful young man … who seeks justice.”

“What? I thought you were about to kill me.”

“I didn’t say that. I said that was what I was
required
to do. But I would be as apt to actually do it as I would be to harness a thousand crows and use them to fly to the moon and back.”

“But …”

“But nothing. Close your mouth and listen to me. I am not the Spring Heeled Jack. Neither am I Robin Hood, Goldilocks, or the Big Bad Wolf.”

“But …”

“But nothing. I am a Mason.”

“A Mason? You mean … someone who goes to meetings at Masonic Lodges?”

“Precisely. Most people know something of Masons, I am sure you have your own impressions. We are the descendants of the great builders of England and Europe, the architects of the world, creators of many structures since the time of Solomon’s Temple, formed into lodges, all of us with philosophies and in pursuit of knowledge, seeking the Supreme Being together.”

“Masons are secretive, aren’t they? Once they’re inside the walls of the lodges? You have secret codes, secret symbols, don’t you? But aren’t Masons just ordinary folk too … you aren’t
terribly
secretive, are you?”

“Most lodges aren’t. But we are. The Hermetic Order of the Sacred Dawn is a higher sect of our kind … a very high order. I am the highest ranking apothecary and alchemist, once the Worshipful Master here. I … I come from a long line of apothecaries, Master Holmes, my father and his father before him and on and on. There is a family story that the Bells once had the name Trismegistus and originated in Egypt long before we came to England, that we knew magic, real magic of the occult sort, not the stuff silly prestidigitators attempt on the London stages, sawing ladies in half and the like.” He looks down at the green and black material. “This is what I wear when I enter the holy altar inside. Some outfits have masks with them too, black paint to mark our faces. Our order has associates all over Europe. We wield greater
power than most can imagine…. And no one is to know our members’ identities.”

“No one?”

“No one. An outsider discovers us on pain of death.”

Sherlock gulps.

“But I doubt the folks inside those walls,” he waves down the street toward the building, “could ever kill another. I know I certainly couldn’t … or maybe I could … but not you, Master Holmes, not you.” He smiles at the boy.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your lips are sealed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sealed with the best glue one could make from any horse in London? A triple promise with sugar piled on top?”

“Yes, sir.”

“For life and beyond?”

“Absolutely. And I’m sorry about the … the Spring Heeled Jack idea.”

Sigerson Bell laughs so loudly that he has to put his hand over his mouth to prevent someone from hearing and coming their way. “Give me a moment, let me gather myself. I shall put away the papers I had come to arrange and we shall walk home together. I want to hear more about Beatrice’s vision.”

An hour later they are strolling arm in arm along Fleet Street toward home. The sun will rise in an hour or two.
Now a few milkwomen are out, walking on their thick white-stockinged legs, their yokes over their shoulders, from which big pails dangle.

Sherlock tells Bell all about Beatrice’s encounter on Westminster Bridge and what he found when he went to investigate. “So, in the end, it was nothing, sir. Especially now that my suspicions of you … and I must say again, sir, that, I am sorry …”

“Not at all, rather flattering I must say, at my age.”

“… it was just a young girl enamored of me.”

“Oh! Is that what you think? You have a rather high opinion of your animal magnetism when it comes to the fairer sex, think you not? Do you really believe that a young girl would go to such lengths just to impress you? It seems unlikely to me.”

“She is a nice girl, sir, very pleasant, but a simple one. I’ve known her since we were children. Her father is a hatter.”

“I have seen this ‘simple girl’ with my own eyes, Sherlock. And I say, ‘Beware.’ She is more than she seems … as most women are. I shall tell you some day about my witch.”

They part ways at Trafalgar Square, the old man anxious to get home to bed, the boy deciding to take a stroll down to Westminster Bridge before he heads back. He knows he won’t be able to sleep. He has always been like that when something is on his mind – he could continue wide awake for a week, he sometimes thinks, if he were really intrigued by a problem. Perhaps he has been unfair to Beatrice, perhaps she and her friend were indeed accosted
by someone on the bridge, nothing to really worry about – a lunatic of some sort – someone acting in a way that disturbed her impressionable female mind. Or perhaps it
was
a vision of a sort, a frightening image made by the lights in the London night and the fearful girls’ imaginations. Perhaps Louise really believed it forced her toward the water: Beatrice fainted. He should have helped her, been more understanding.

When he arrives at the bridge, it is still pre-dawn, but there are people crossing toward the main part of the city, and a few going south. They are mostly working class, ready to start their trades early. But then Sherlock spots someone who stands out among these ordinary folk. He wears a bowler hat, and is examining the very spot on the bridge where Beatrice said she and her friend were attacked.