“Is it bad?” she asks.
“Master Lestrade, you must tend to her. There are clean clothes in the back room where the family lives and a pump out front in the little square. Put some water on those lacerations. And have her come to see Mr. Bell tomorrow. He works wonders with infections.”
“I am quite capable of looking after her. And
“I must go.”
Sherlock heads for the door and Lestrade removes to the back room. But just as Holmes is going out, Beatrice speaks to him in an anguished voice. “I have another injury, I think, on my leg. It’s … up high.”
Sherlock turns. She is lifting her dress … and the undergarments. He sees her smooth white skin above her ankle, and then his eyes go up her shapely calf, past her knee, and the curve of her thigh. Up there, he sees another welt.
“I … I … yes,” says Sherlock.
“Have you ever seen such a thing?”
“No. No, Beatrice, I haven’t.”
She lowers her dress and weakly smiles at him.
“I must be off!” He stumbles out the door.
But he doesn’t go far. He waits in the shadows until the police come, two Peelers on the run. He expects Lestrade to emerge soon, but he doesn’t. It must be half an hour later, after the hatter has returned and more police arrive, that young Lestrade finally appears at the door.
Sherlock pounces on him as he walks past.
“OH!” he cries, his voice an octave higher than usual.
“Calm yourself, Romeo.”
“I … I am as calm as –”
“The Lake District?”
“You have no cause to call me Romeo!”
“I don’t?”
“No, you don’t. And if you persist … I will box your ears.”
“Or shoot me with your pistol while hanging upside down from a lamppost?”
“Don’t tell my father.”
“Of course not … if you do me a favor in return. Stop by Scotland Yard on your way home and tell me if there is any news of Spring Heeled Jack attacks over the last few hours. And if so, I’d like some details, something the papers won’t have. We can walk there together. I’ll wait for you down White Hall Street.”
“I don’t need to.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The last few Bobbies who responded to our call were chattering like monkeys. They said they heard there were as many as three attacks tonight. The city will be terrified.”
“Three attacks?”
“And one wasn’t like the others.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was murder tonight, Sherlock.”
“Murder?”
“You won’t believe what he’s done.”
A HALL OF MIRRORS
Sherlock finds it difficult to get to sleep that night. Master Lestrade hadn’t been able to give him many details. What the young detective knew was that the Bobbies were certain that the Spring Heeled Jack had committed murder of a most gruesome kind, that the policemen who were on the scene came back with blood covering their boots, as if they had been wading through it. The Bobbies said there were rumors swirling in the city about it and that they couldn’t say more. They’d been told that policemen were being pulled from their beds and posted throughout London, and their Commissioner was talking about putting a Bobbie “on every street corner.”
As Sherlock tries to settle down in his wardrobe bed, his mind is racing, imagining the events of last night and who the Jack really is. All he knows for certain is that Malefactor must have had a hand in at least one of the attacks, and that his rival isn’t above committing murder.
Holmes tries to distract himself by reading a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps a fictional nightmare can replace a real one. But it doesn’t work. He sets it aside and lies back, listening to Bell tossing and turning upstairs, and as he finally starts to fade to sleep, he thinks the old man has risen and is descending the spiral staircase, dressed as the Spring Heeled Jack. But when he awakes with a start all is silent.
He puts his head back on his feather pillow and is suddenly out in the city at night, crossing Westminster Bridge, rats scurrying along the cobblestones, crows cawing on the House of Commons, and bats swarming in the black sky above. As he glances up to them, he sees the Jack on the balustrade wall and then notices Beatrice and Louise running at the other end of the bridge. The Jack rises and leaps after them at supernatural speed, closing in with each gigantic bound.
Sherlock tries to run after them, but his feet are glued to the ground. He looks down and sees he is stuck in congealed blood. He has the sense that he is being observed. He turns and sees another Jack perched on the balustrade! It has Crew’s face. Sherlock hears a hiss and turns to the opposite side of the bridge. Another Jack is perched there! It has Sigerson Bell’s eyes. Another is near it, looking like Munby, a fourth is Malefactor, another John Silver, a sixth Irene, and another … Louise.
Holmes looks down the balustrades and sees that they are filled with Spring Heeled fiends, all the way to Southwark. And across the river he spots them flying from the buildings, huge dark bats in the sky. He turns back to the House of Commons: the Jacks are lining it and the House of Lords, and a cluster is roosting on Big Ben. A veritable swarm upon the Palace of Westminster, their weight begins to make it crumble. Far away, in the direction Beatrice has gone, he hears her scream. The sound echoes throughout London, a blood-curdling shriek.
He shouts out loud and comes bolt awake.
He can’t sleep after that, and cannot wait for the sun to come up. In fact, it is still dark when he rises from his bed and makes his way to Trafalgar Square to await Dupin.
“Mr. Dupin!”
“No joy in London today, Master ’olmes, no joy. They’ll be saying prayers in the churches, they will.”
“I –”
“I knows what you wants. And I’m ’alf of a mind not to give it to you. Why was you asking about the Spring ’eeled Jack a week ago? What does you know, boy?”
Dupin doesn’t sound like his friendly self.
“I know one of the girls who was attacked, that first time. She informed me soon after it happened.”
“You means the one the Jack says is next?”
“Next?”
“The one whose door ’ad the note on it.”
