The Execution of Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

It was almost more than flesh and blood could stand. I leant into the unwashed odour of him, the ginger hair and slobbered beard, the crafty gaze of those eyes, the nose that scented easy money.

‘I shall certainly …’

Before I could add what it was that I would certainly do, he spoke softly.

‘As you value both our lives, Watson, give me in charge to that policeman just beyond you. The fellow standing opposite us at the St. James’s Square turning has had me in his sight for the past half hour. Let the club porter do it for you.’

How I kept my composure after all that had happened, I cannot tell you. Yet to hear his voice was to know that every word was in earnest. I straightened up and said loudly, ‘You are no soldier but a common scoundrel. Bread and water is too good for you!’

I strode up the steps of the Diogenes Club and gave my instructions to the hall porter. He looked from the doorway and saw at a glance the scene I had described. The policeman was still listening to the barrel organ. The ‘old sojer’ from Maiwand was still sitting disconsolately against the wall of the Reform Club, holding out his enamel cup to passersby. Opposite the St. James’s Square turning, a man in a long coat that was too heavy for the spring warmth was pacing slowly and glancing at his watch from time to time, to give the impression of one who was kept waiting at a rendezvous.

The porter crossed Pall Mall and began to walk towards the policeman. Behind me, the voice of Mycroft Holmes said, ‘My dear Dr. Watson! Why do you come alone? Is not Sherlock with you?’

Curiously, both children had been given the first name of William, which was why neither used it. William Mycroft Holmes was tall and portly, in so many respects the antithesis of his younger brother. In the matter of clothing, he must have been the despair of Savile Row. The suit that a careful tailor had made for him looked as if it had been wrapped round a miscellaneous bundle rather than a measured body. The face was round, while his brother’s was aquiline. Yet the gray eyes had that same penetrating gaze, and the forehead, unusually wide, was crowned by the flat and shortcut hair of a schoolboy. If the body was absurd, the head, without being in the least handsome, spoke of double-firsts in mathematics at Cambridge or in classical languages at Oxford—or both. He was, I had heard from Sherlock Holmes, a Fellow of All Souls and traveled to Oxford every week to dine at that college among the nation’s intellectual elite. Mycroft had won his fellowship by a brilliant contribution to classical grammar in a competitive essay on ‘The Resolution of Enclitic δε.’ Yet to the nation, he was virtually unknown. Sometimes fun had been poked at him, but you may be sure he never saw the point of it. Sherlock Holmes assured me that this paragon, as a Balliol undergraduate, had been the target of satire in the famous book of college rhymes.

My name is William Mycroft Holmes,

A giant among little gnomes.

You’ve lost your Greek optative verb?

I’m thinking, kindly don’t disturb.

‘Where is Sherlock?’

There was no time for explanations. I led him to the window of the Diogenes Club. The barrel organ had fallen silent and we were just in time to see the constable crossing Pall Mall. He stooped and spoke to the derelict who looked up from his sitting place.

‘I do not understand,’ said Mycroft Holmes simply, as the constable took the beggar’s arm and encouraged him to his feet. They began to walk away towards Vine Street police station.

‘That is your brother.’ I noticed that the loiterer near St. James’s Square gave one more look at his watch, for the sake of verisimilitude no doubt, and then walked away in the other direction.

‘My brother? Sherlock? That beggar?’

I nodded. The shock of the past ten minutes after weeks of terrible anxiety had drawn the energy from me.

‘That is your brother.’

‘Masquerading as a beggar in Pall Mall? But why? Does he not see how he might embarrass me?’

‘You shall hear everything, so far as I know it.’

Mycroft Holmes was not mollified by this. He looked down at me from his considerable height. There was a mixture of incomprehension and reproof in his expression, which now gave him something of a sulky air. He shook his head slowly.

‘I have tolerated his frolics and farces, goodness knows,’ he said plaintively, ‘but this is quite beyond everything. On my way here I stopped and heard the story of his dreadful injury. I was so taken by it that I gave the fellow half a sovereign. I do call that the limit!’

It was enough for the time being that I had seen him alive. I still could not say he was safe if the stranger who stood across the street from the Diogenes Club was what I suspected. Yet I knew that if Holmes were to survive, he must be left to his own devices. When the mysterious beggar was led away by a police constable, the watcher on the opposite pavement ended his vigil, and I believed Holmes had won the first hand in the game. Had I embraced the vagrant as my friend, we might both be floating in the river with our throats cut by now.

Communication between us appeared to be impossible. How easy it would be for our opponents to intercept a letter addressed to me by bribing a dishonest postal sorter or, more likely, by planting their own man to work at the sorting office by means of a forged reference. A message scrawled on the morning newspaper pushed through our letter box, or slipped inside its pages, would also be read.

My thoughts ran upon a message added to a newspaper or a letter. No doubt the thoughts of our enemies followed the same path. Only one who knew the workings of that indomitable intelligence would understand that Holmes might transmit the most detailed and vital messages invisibly, by means of what was missing rather than by what was added. I recalled the mysterious incident of what the dog did in the nighttime. But the dog did nothing in the nighttime, I protested. Precisely, said Holmes, that was the mystery.

The morning after the Pall Mall encounter, I unfolded the newspaper which awaited me on the breakfast table and saw that there had been a mistake. It was not the
Morning Post
but the
Times
, and it was dated the day before yesterday. Looking at the front page, it was distinctly marked in pencil ‘221b Baker Street.’ It had frequently happened that the wrong paper was delivered by a careless newsboy. That it should be two days out of date was no mere error.

Those who have read our Lauriston Gardens mystery in
A Study in Scarlet
or
The Sign of Four,
may recall the ‘unofficial force’ always at the disposal of Sherlock Holmes, his Baker Street Irregulars. He need only send Mrs. Hudson’s Billy for them. Ten minutes later, accompanied by a wail of dismay from our landlady, naked feet would patter on the stairs as with a loud clatter of voices a dozen dirty and ragged little street arabs burst in on us. Yet in the presence of Sherlock Holmes they were as smart and obedient to command as they had just been ragged and disrespectful.

These young scamps had often been our eyes and ears, once showing themselves better able to keep a log of Thames river traffic than any division of Scotland Yard. How easily might one of them insinuate himself into Baker Street newspaper delivery. How easily might a villain who tracked Sherlock Holmes be tracked in turn by twenty pairs of eyes following every movement and manoeuvre. It is a truth that the most consummate villain, or the most widespread yet tightly controlled criminal conspiracy, is helpless against one thing—the will of the people. In our case it was not only the prospect of half a sovereign for work well done that attracted these little brigands but the adventure of working with the most famous detective in London.

I opened the paper again, no longer wondering who had sent it or how it had got here. But there was no message, nothing written on any page except the address of our rooms on the first. I stood up and shook the pages, one by one. Nothing fell out. I sat down again, went through it more carefully, and noticed that there was a page missing. It would scarcely have been noticed by anyone checking to see if a message had been written in the margin or hidden between the pages. Nowadays a single page of newsprint is sometimes added to supplement the folded double pages and this was how the mutilated one appeared.

Without stopping to finish my breakfast or even my coffee, I called a cab from the rank at Regents Park and went straight to my club—the East India in St. James’s Square. The East India takes in every morning and evening paper from the capital with quite a few of the better-class provincials. I turned to the missing page of yesterday’s
Times
. The major item, a continuation of Home News under the Cricket columns, was not in doubt.

Fresh details have emerged from the City of London concerning the electric explosion which occurred early in the morning of Thursday last. It is the latest in a series of such accidents to the electric supply affecting the Newgate Street area. On the last occasion, our readers will recall from our report of 6 January, a series of the electric conduit boxes opposite St. Sepulchre’s and in Newgate Street itself were seen to issue smoke and shortly afterwards exploded with a burst of flame. In the present case, it is reported that a far larger explosion occurred within the disused buildings of Newgate prison.

Contrary to first reports, there was no injury or loss of life. We are grateful to know that this misunderstanding has been clarified. The contractors’ men had not yet arrived for their day’s work. It is thanks to this, rather than to any vigilance on the part of the electric supply company, that serious injuries, indeed fatalities, were avoided. Several windows in Newgate Street were cracked by the blast and one window display in the direct path was wrecked. A column of smoke was seen to rise above the high walls of the exercise yard of the deserted prison. Any person at the centre of the explosion, where happily there were none at this hour, must infallibly have perished.

It had been supposed that the supply of electricity, an amenity which reached only certain wards of the prison, had been disconnected some time ago. This was evidently not the case. A supply of commercial water-gas was also continued by the Aldgate Coal and Coke Company. An electric spark appears to have been the cause of the explosion. Disconnection of their supply has now been undertaken by the Charing Cross and City Electric Light Company from the company’s Newgate Street conduit box.

It is stated on behalf of agents to the subcontractors that no serious damage was sustained beyond a small area within the prison which had in any event been prepared for demolition in a few weeks’ time. A small fire which had begun was brought quickly under control without requiring the attendance of the London Brigade. There is nonetheless a cause of severe misgiving as to the safety of the Charing Cross Electric Light Company’s mode of supply and the wisdom of allowing a flow of highly volatile water-gas to continue in such ancient and ill-ventilated premises as these. A report of the Cripplegate Ward Fire Committee is to be presented to the next meeting of the ratepayers. The matter is also to be debated next week at the monthly meeting of the Court of Common Council to be held at the Guildhall on Wednesday.

Only when I heard the complete story of my friend’s escape did I understand that he was coming down to freedom from the roofs of Newgate Street as the lighted lantern flames touched off the gas filling the condemned cell. The whole truth, to which the newspapers did not have access, was that the door and windows of the condemned cell had been blown clean out into the exercise yard, along with several feet of its wall. Even as I read the newspaper report, it told me a hundred times more than it might have conveyed to any other reader. As a medical man with some experience of injuries from explosion in battle, I could not believe that anyone in that cell itself—or many of those in close proximity—would have survived the ferocity of a blast that did such damage.

As I sat on the library sofa before the log fire, I knew this was a veiled account of how Sherlock Holmes had escaped from the tightest corner he was ever in. Had all his enemies been destroyed? It seemed at least one might still be tracking him, to judge by the incidents in Pall Mall. Could they tell whether Holmes had perished in the blast or not? Knowing the man they were dealing with, they would not be fools enough to take the explosion for an accident. Had my friend thought his time had run out and had he striven to take them all with him—only to make a lucky escape?

I flatter myself I came close to the truth, even before hearing his account. As a medical man, I knew an eruption of highly explosive water gas would leave human debris in the ruins. Whether any belonged to their captive would be hard to say. I did not yet know my friend had taken the precaution of locking the metal cuff round the ankle of his dead guard. There was a chance that Crellin might pass as the body of Sherlock Holmes burnt beyond recognition.

I could only make my way back to Baker Street and await further communications. The next morning brought another copy of the
Times
. It was two days old, but there was not a page missing.

Clearing aside the breakfast things, I spread the paper on the table and began to go through it minutely. There was no item of news that could be of the least relevance. I was reduced to running my finger down the first of the Deaths columns and when I reached the foot of it, I felt as if my heart took a final leap and stopped. The corner of the page was torn away. To a casual glance, it might seem that this was damage inflicted by the sharp edge of the letter box or by carelessness. The complete copy of the paper in the club library told me otherwise.

Milverton. Suddenly at Claremont, Cape Town, on the 14th inst., Henry Caius Milverton of The Borders, Windlesham, Surrey. The interment of ashes and a memorial service will be held at St. George’s Church, Windlesham, on a date to be announced.

In all our dealings with the criminal underworld, there were perhaps half a dozen names never to be forgotten. Milverton was one of them, though which Milverton this might be I had as yet no idea. However, as I read the announcement, the message from my friend could not have been plainer. One other thing I knew from it, whoever Henry Caius Milverton was, he had died a good deal nearer to home than the Cape Province of South Africa! The announcement was clearly intended to appease the curiosity of those who would otherwise wonder how their acquaintance had—more literally than they would guess!—vanished into thin air. Of course, I could not even begin to prove it, but I felt to a certainty that Henry Caius Milverton had been blown to smithereens in that Newgate explosion.