The Secret Fiend

“Where … where were you, sir? It is well past midnight.”

“Past two o’clock, I’m afraid.”

“And?”

“And what? Oh. My whereabouts. Yes, well … out for a constitutional … quite … a constitutional. Taking some air!”

“At this hour, sir?”

“Could not sleep.”

“I didn’t hear you go by.”

“Precisely. You never know what I might get up to, my boy.”

It is a sentence meant to end the conversation. There is a tone of irritation in the old man’s voice, which tells Sherlock that further questions are not welcome. Sigerson Bell is rarely cross with his charge and never cold. But the boy feels a breeze in these words. His master is trying to back him off. It is almost difficult to believe.

What is this about?

Bell moves toward the laboratory, then stops dead still, like a bloodhound that has sensed its quarry.

“We have a visitor? At this hour?”

Though Bell has yet to see Beatrice, he is somehow aware of her presence in the next room. As he floats through the lab door toward her, Sherlock notices that he is carrying something under one arm – it looks like clothing, though it is shiny, like a costume. It is green and black. The sight of it shocks him. He is thinking about the Spring Heeled Jack.

The old man is soon standing in front of Beatrice.

“My dear, you are trembling. Let me take your pulse and hear your tale. What brings you here at this hour? Are you an acquaintance of Master Holmes?”

He presses two fingers to the jugular vein on her neck.

“Yes.”

“And can you not visit him at more respectable hours?”

“It isn’t as you think.”

“I think nothing. I merely listen. You are nearing fifteen years of age, the daughter of a hatter, resident of Southwark but employed as a scullery maid in a wealthy part of town, beautiful and normally of good health, as fond of this boy as I … and deeply troubled by something that occurred within this past half hour.”

“I was walking home with my friend Louise, when I saw –”

“She saw nothing.” Holmes has entered the lab, his eyes still glancing down at the clothes under Bell’s arm. He can see now that the old man is holding a bottle with black liquid in it too, and a large mask that could fit entirely over someone’s face.

“She saw nothing? Nothing has increased the palpitations of her heart, dilated her pupils, and caused her to perspire on a February evening? I must meet this nothing. It is as extraordinary as Mr. Disraeli.”

“She had a vision.”

“A vision?” Bell turns back to Beatrice and regards her with a penetrating look. “Of what?”

“It was the –”

“She felt she was being followed.”

“By what?” Bell isn’t looking at Sherlock; he stares directly into the girl’s eyes. It is a mesmerizing regard.

“The –” begins Beatrice.

“A thief, a rough of some sort who meant her evil, but she escaped from whatever it was, if it indeed ever existed. Miss Beatrice is, as you say, quite healthy.”

“Did you see this … rough?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Were you alone?”

“I –”

“Yes, she was.”

“Sherlock,” says Bell with irritation as he turns from the girl to the boy, “can she not speak for herself?”

“She is very frightened. I don’t want to cause her undue upset.”

“Quite.”

“I was about to take her home.”

“By all means.”

Bell turns to Beatrice again. “And you are sure you did not get a good view of this fiend?”

She looks to Sherlock, reads the concern in those gray eyes, and stiffens her resolve.

“No. No, sir. I did not.”

“Well, then … you must be on your way.”

In seconds they are out the door. Sherlock would never think anything sinister about Sigerson Bell. And he isn’t doing so now. He is just being cautious. He has seen many images of the Spring Heeled Jack in the Penny Dreadfuls. There are rumors that this fiend once truly existed and haunted the streets of London … back in Sigerson Bell’s day.

It wore a costume. It was green and black.

MYSTERY ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE

“I have a confession to make,” says Beatrice shyly, feeling safe and thrilled to have her arm through Sherlock’s, as they walk south past Leicester Square and the magnificent Alhambra Palace Theatre on their way to Westminster. The square is quiet now. The glimmer of the gas lamps barely penetrates the dark, frozen night; only their footfalls and a few claps of horse hooves, a few mumbling voices and sudden shouts echo in the gloom. The last survivors of the glorious evening before, are straggling home or lying on cobblestones. A drunken tradesman stumbles toward them, his crooked nose leaking blood from a scrap. Sherlock steers Beatrice from the square and across a narrow street to the opposite foot pavement.

“’Fraid of me, is you lad! Come back and get some of what I ’as! I comes out at night and turns into the devil, me friend. The devil! That’s what’s inside o’ me!”

Beatrice appears to be trembling, so Sherlock holds her a little tighter and doesn’t notice the smile that comes over her face. She glances at him.

“I ’ave been following you, I ’ave,” she says.

He stops. “You what?”

“It’s of no consequence, honestly, Sherlock. I was just interested in what you were taking up your time with. That is, when you weren’t assisting your master.”

Sherlock’s heartbeat increases. “You followed me?”

“Well, following might be stating it a pinch strongly, now that I think on it.”

“Have you done this often?”

“No, no. No, Sherlock, not often. Not often at all. But –”

“But what?”

“I know you do police things. And I know it was you who ’elped Scotland Yard catch the East End murderer and the Brixton Gang and that you were some’ow involved in finding Victoria Rathbone.”

“How did you –”

“No other boy could do such things. I’m proud of you, Sherlock ’olmes.”

She is looking up at him with those big black eyes, leaning against him, warming him, gazing at him as if he were a great man. Sherlock Holmes considers himself to be beyond flattery. It is a thing born of weak emotions. But Beatrice Leckie disarms him. She isn’t a deep thinker like Irene Doyle, but she isn’t a fool, either. She wears her emotions on her poor sleeves, with none of the arts of feminine artificiality practiced by most English “ladies”: the veneer of weakness, the fainting, the standing on ceremony, the clever games meant to gain things from men. He