Death in the Air

He rises and darts across Rotherhithe Street and onto the lane that fronts the desolate buildings. The sounds of his footsteps echo, and just like the night before, it seems there are many of them … more than his own. What a time, after all his precautions, to discover that he’s indeed being followed! But when he looks around, no one is in sight, ahead or behind. He keeps moving, close to the buildings, all his senses alert.

Just as he suspected, there doesn’t appear to be anyone inside … except in that last one, where those faint sounds seem to be coming from. That building is so far from the main road, and close to the river, that raised voices in its inner sanctums can’t be clearly made out by passersby unless they are right up close.

Though it terrifies him to even contemplate, Sherlock realizes that he is going to have to enter the building. All the doors on the other warehouses are broken, and knocked in, but when he gets to this last one, he can see that its entrance is closed tightly. He slowly approaches it … very slowly … then stands with his back plastered against the dirty brick wall. No one inside can see him there, even if they look through the door’s little barred window or straight down from an upper floor. The sounds are indeed coming from this warehouse, somewhere upstairs. He gently nudges the thick wooden door with one hand.

It creaks open.

It must have been unlatched. That seems strange, in fact it doesn’t make sense, but he crouches down and slips inside anyway. Instantly, two small figures fly at him! They are black and oily, and scream. Crows. They swoop past his head and out into the night, crying out as if warning him. The muffled sounds from upstairs pause for a second … and then resume. Sherlock lies on the dirt floor, his heart pounding. Crows always have reasons for being places; they can sense impending death and how to profit from it. They understand evil, accept it as a part of life, especially when it is perpetrated by human beings, which is often. The crows know something is afoot in this broken-down place: the bloody Brixton Gang would be a perfect group of human beings for these clever birds to keep their eyes on.

Though it is dim in here, Sherlock can make out the room’s cluttered innards: monster coils of ropes for boats, long wood poles that look like pieces of masts, moldy sections of sails, and oily remnants of steam engines. It smells earthy, and like the river.

The upstairs sounds are getting clearer. It is plain that they aren’t solely human. The boy hears a dog snarling and the squeals and painful cries of other, smaller animals; and desperate scurrying and scrambling across the floor. Men seem to be encouraging them. It sounds like fighting and it frightens Sherlock to his Wellington shoes.

Perhaps it is time to go?

But he doesn’t know anything of value yet. He has to get closer. He spots a crumbling staircase that rises straight up in the center of this fishy, foul-smelling ground floor.

What if I go up there?

He wants to move toward it, but can’t. He is simply too scared. His whole body is shaking.

Then the big, outside door closes behind him.

Sherlock drops flat on the floor and lies as still as possible. The garbled sounds from above pause again and then resume. On the ground level, there is silence. No footsteps, nothing. Sherlock waits. Was it just the wind? But the humid night had been still outside. He twists his head around and peers in the direction of the door.

Nothing.

Going back to that entrance seems as perilous now as moving to the staircase and up its rotting steps. So he waits a little longer and then crawls to the center of the room. At the stairs, his hawk-like nose almost resting on the stinking bottom plank, he casts his eyes upward. Sweat drips off his forehead and into his eyes, making them sting. There’s a board pulled across the opening at the top and a small crack of light emitting from the next floor. He can hear those horrific sounds better here; can clearly make out the dog’s growls and cries of pain, the other animals’ screams and whistles, and men shouting encouragement.

“Go to ’em, Killer! Face ’em, me boy! Face ’em!”

Sherlock slides onto the first step and begins to move upward, still on his belly, using his feet to secure footing on each step and push himself forward. Without warning the third step gives way and his foot goes right through with a loud crack. To him, it sounds like an air gun going off.

He freezes. The men upstairs stop talking momentarily, but then start again. Sherlock looks down at the ground floor. As he does, for an instant he thinks he sees a tall boy standing against the far wall in a top hat and long black tailcoat. Sucking in his breath, he closes his eyes hard and opens them again. The image is gone. All he sees is a greasy rope hanging on a big curving hook on that wall, just below a little shelf with a section of a black stove pipe resting on it.

He looks up again, takes another step, and feels his hair touch the floorboard. Placing his fingers ever so slowly into the crack, he tries to shove the board back, but it won’t budge. Maybe it is nailed. He braces his feet on the step below – it feels steady – and shoves harder on the board. It loosens and snaps back, slamming down as it lands. Again Sherlock holds his breath; again the men momentarily stop talking … and then go on.

The boy waits for a count of one hundred before he lifts his head, very slowly, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, just high enough so he can see into the room, readying himself to leap down and run from the building. But from where he is, he can’t spot anyone. He turns his head in every direction and surveys the space. There are fewer dirty remnants of the seafaring life here; in fact the floor is almost empty, its only real inhabitant, a thick layer of dust.

Moments later Sherlock Holmes is standing in the room, aware that whatever is going on up above is directly over him. No more than a few steps away from the opening in the floor through which he has just ascended, an old wooden ladder is propped straight up into the ceiling. Sherlock glides silently over to it. The sounds from above grow louder as he nears. He peers up. The ladder was obviously placed here after a staircase collapsed because it leads to another, sealed-off opening. This building has evidently not been in use for a long time. The trapdoor has an iron handle, and is cut just right, so the butts at the top of the ladder fit tightly into two holes.

That’s where he must go.

Only now he really wonders if he should. Again, he has no idea what the Brixton Gang look like (though it sounds like four men on the upper floor, the group’s exact number). What would he accomplish by actually seeing them?

But he can’t report to Scotland Yard that he’s simply found four strange men doing something suspicious in a Rotherhithe warehouse. They could be anyone having illicit fun – sporting men, tradesmen, even politicians or police employees. No…. He has to go up there and try to spot something that identifies them.

Sherlock places one boot gingerly on the bottom rung, then the next, and then the next, until his eyes are right at the handle.

Dare he lift the trapdoor?

The sounds of the dog and other animals are pitiful now – it is obvious that the canine is fighting the others. Every last beast sounds desperate.

“Lay ’em bets down, Charon!” cries one horrible voice.

Charon. That’s one name.

“But the poor brute ain’t got naught left in ’im! Look, ’e’s puffin’ like a steer! ’e’s bleedin’ all over the bleedin’ place!”

There is laughter.

“You got enough left from the Palace job, Sutton! Lay it down!” demands a whiny higher-pitched player.

The Palace job. And another name.

“’ow many rats left?” growls the first, rough voice.

A sinking feeling passes through Sherlock. He knows what these fiends are doing. They are pitting rats, likely dozens of them, maybe hundreds, against a bull terrier in a fight to the death; and betting on it. He’s read of this sort of thing, but never really believed it happened, or if it did, that he would ever be near it. He has entered a den of evil indeed, a sort of Hades. He wishes he had the strength and the numbers to burst into that room and arrest them all.

But he isn’t gaining enough evidence to do anything, not standing here blind below these fiends. He has two names, some talk of a “job,” and an illegal animal fight. That might be enough to bring the police … or it might not. To be sure, he needs more. He has to get a look at their faces, at least one of them. He has to be able to recognize