Death in the Air

seems to vanish.

At almost the same instant, the stable boys brings two big chestnut horses forward down the main hall that separates the stalls.

“You shall ride with my son,” says Lestrade gruffly.

Sherlock Holmes has never been on a horse, the gallant beasts who are the real engines of London. He looks at their strong legs and trunks and up at their dark eyes. Their backs seem very high.

After young Lestrade mounts his steed and settles himself into the front part of the saddle, feet in the stirrups, he reaches down for the other boy’s hand. Sherlock hesitates.

“Come on!” shouts the Inspector’s son. He seems anxious to have Holmes with him.

Sherlock grips the arm and feels himself hoisted way up onto the horse’s back behind the saddle.

“Hold on!”

The horse rears up before it charges out through the wide open wooden doors and across the cobblestones. Its hooves strike the surface like gun shots. The Inspector is out in front of them.

“Hee-ah!”

They bounce violently up and down in the saddle as the magnificent animals take them flying across London. Sherlock holds on for dear life.

They cut through a smaller artery head past the fabulous Northumberland House Hotel, by Charing Cross Railway Station again, and head down The Strand until they reach Waterloo Bridge. They cross into grimy Southwark and gallop east through winding streets, wide and narrow, racing past the denizens of the night. Sherlock sees city life from another perspective now. Faces look up at them, some frightened, dirty, and toothless; others conniving and calculating. They all know this is the Force on the prowl.

Just south of London Bridge, they pause on a street near the lawns of airy, white-stoned St. Thomas’ Hospital, where the famous Florence Nightingale is in charge. They don’t have to wait for long. Within minutes they hear the other ten policemen galloping toward them from the west. Holmes spies a bookish-looking, bespectacled young man holding on to a Peeler aboard one of the horses at the rear. He is clinging to the Bobbie’s waist and looking both terrified and thrilled: the reporter from The Times! Then they are all off again, toward Rotherhithe.

“You take the lead!” shouts Lestrade at Sherlock several blocks later.

“Head to the Thames Tunnel,” says the boy into his jockey’s ear, “then follow Rotherhithe Street until I tell you to stop.”

It grows darker as they approach the nearly unlit industrial areas. Four bull’s eye lanterns bounce up and down on the sides of the horses, like big, eerie, fireflies in the night.

When the black chimneys of the Asphalte Works appear up ahead, it is time to become much more cautious.

“Slow down to a trot,” says Holmes.

As Lestrade sees them ease off, he motions to his men for silence. Soon their horses are walking and Sherlock gives a signal to dismount. He can make out the warehouses on the narrow lane that runs to the river, though they are almost invisible in the hot, misty night.

“Where?” whispers the detective.

“In the last warehouse, by the water.”

The men take their horses into the yard at the abandoned soap factory across the street and tie them to tethering posts by an old wooden trough. Then everyone moves like ghosts across the roadway, crouching low, lanterns spread out among the group and held close to the ground, until they gather against the soot-stained brick wall of the first building.

Sherlock is near the front with the two Lestrades. He speaks quietly into the detective’s ear.

“They were on the first floor of the last building. There is a staircase that leads up to it from the ground floor and a ladder to the one above, where they had their dog-and-rat fight. There are windows in the roof on the upper floor – that’s the only avenue of escape that I know of other than the front door. There are four of them plus a lad named Brim who is dressed in dark clothing and a top hat, carrying a knife … and a hunting crop. The two younger gang members are named Crowley and Sticks, the older, Charon and Sutton.”

Though Lestrade is impressed with the thoroughness of Sherlock’s report he doesn’t show it.

“If they aren’t there, I shall have you prosecuted for providing the authorities with false information,” he mutters. He turns to the other Bobbies and motions for six to come with him to the front door of the last building and the other four, the ones with the lanterns, to spread out around every side of it.

“Look for and attend to all means of egress!” he orders urgently, but quietly.

Sherlock can only pray that the Brixton Gang is still in there. He can see the side of Lestrade’s face under his black bowler hat just ahead of him as they sneak along the wall. It has turned red, sweat has come out in big drops on his forehead and along his eyebrows, which nearly touch in a bushy row like an overgrown hedge above his big nose.

Sherlock feels a tug on his sleeve. It’s the reporter. He is fumbling a small, bound book in his hand but any ink and pen he might have are still in his pockets. He is breathing loudly, gulping audibly, the lenses in his little wire- rimmed spectacles look foggy and his voice is shaky when he speaks.

“And who are you, young sir?”

“Ssssshh!!” hisses Lestrade, motioning for the little man to move to the rear of the group.

Sherlock’s heart leaps as they approach the last building. He can see a dim light coming through the cracks in the door. Are they about to capture the Brixton Gang? Will he actually gain credit for this? Will he get his reward?

Lestrade makes the policeman at his elbow open the entrance. He is a big, burly man with a thick mustache and mutton-chop whiskers that wind three-quarters of the way down the side of his face – the strap of his coxcomb helmet is tight across the dimple in his square chin.

All six Peelers, Lestrade, and the two boys enter without a sound into the gloomy ground floor, eying the staircase dimly evident up ahead. They can smell the building’s fishy inner organs. The nervous reporter follows and … whacks his boot against the wooden lip on the threshold and falls onto his face.

The sound echoes in the building.

There is a scurrying up above. Five pairs of feet are on the move.

“Police!” shouts Lestrade. “Come out and show yourselves, you scoundrels!”

As the reporter curls up into a ball on the floor, the policemen make for the stairs on the fly. That’s curious, thinks Sherlock, the fiends didn’t douse their lights. But almost immediately he knows why. The sounds of breaking glass come from above and then … the smell of gas. It is instantly pitch black. A look of horror spreads across Lestrade’s face. The criminals are breaking their gaslights and putting their candles to anything flammable!

This old warehouse is a tinderbox.

“FIRE!” Sherlock shrieks.

For a moment Lestrade doesn’t know what to do. His men freeze too. Should he send them blindly upstairs into what, in minutes, will be a deathly inferno, or retreat to see if the gang can be collared on their way out … if they come out?

He cannot miss this chance to nab the Brixton Gang!

“Upstairs!” he cries.

“No!” shouts Sherlock. But in an instant the Peelers are all scrambling up the steps. Lestrade stands stock still beneath, apparently unable to move.

Sherlock seizes the Inspector’s son and pulls him to the door.

“Out!” he shouts. “Out!”

“But …” begins the other boy.

Sherlock hauls him violently and drags him into the street. There, they race for the river. In half a minute they are down by the water, looking up at the roof of the old warehouse. He spots the lights of two other constables moving along in the night: half of the group that was left outdoors.

“Here!” he calls out. “Gather by the river!”

Sherlock Holmes knows that experienced criminals always have a plan of escape, just as he did when he