The Secret Fiend

was right.

The Old Nichol Street Rookery in Bethnal Green is a perfect site for another Spring Heeled Jack attack. Beatrice and whomever she is working with have made a smart decision. It is north of the river and almost all the other appearances have been to the south. It is also in a poor neighborhood, very poor – just above Whitechapel Road in the East End. The Old Nichol Street Rookery is a London slum unlike any other, infamous for its crowded conditions, its crime and disease. But Sherlock runs across the bridge toward it, heading for it like a racehorse. He knows where the Spring Heeled Jack is about to strike! He will confront him in the dangerous little streets and alleys of that desperate slum amidst its filth and poverty. It would be best to be accompanied by others, by young Lestrade, by the Force themselves. But that is impossible. His only hope of staying in London, staying with Sigerson Bell, and becoming the person he wants to be, is to do this alone, completely alone. Alone is best anyway. I can’t believe I thought of Beatrice Leckie as a partner!

If he can capture the Jack, or at least set up a hue and cry and attract the police, all will be well. They will see that he is the Jack’s enemy, not his accomplice. But who is this fiend? Who is working with Beatrice Leckie? Can I REALLY confront him? This villain seems to have almost supernatural powers.

Holmes is glad he has his horsewhip up his sleeve.

UNMASKED

As he runs, he thinks. But his mind keeps turning to Beatrice. How could she do this? He shirks it off. Think about the crimes. What do I know? He considers the note that young Lestrade found in the Isle of Dogs. It had horse hairs on it … the blood was a strange color. What if the blood, all that blood saturating the marsh, was actually horse blood?

He runs up through the old city, toward Bethnal Green. His heart is pumping and not just due to the strain of his sprint. The neighborhoods are getting worse. Darkness has now completely descended. Even if Beatrice wanted to help him, she couldn’t – young Lestrade will have stopped at the hatter’s shop.

The crowds are thin at this hour, but he senses that someone is following him, far back among the pedestrians. Malefactor? The young crime lord has gone underground, but Sherlock knows that he will never be free of the scoundrel. I am vulnerable while I am pursuing someone else, my attention on my prey.

But then he feels a second presence, up high on the buildings. Sherlock is scurrying along wide Shoreditch Road, in order to keep off the smaller streets for as long as possible. He glances back and up onto the roofs … no one.

He turns to his task again, running, thinking once more of Beatrice’s notes, now stuffed in his pockets. She wrote the Treasure family’s name on one! He can’t bear to even imagine her involved in what that fiend did. Huffing and puffing, he pulls that note from his pocket with a sweaty hand and looks at it closely. The date and the time are for tomorrow. But the Isle of Dogs murder occurred yesterday. It doesn’t make sense. There is another word written there – MONTREAL. Why Montreal? What does that mean? He contemplates another note, the one with the strange message: MUST HAVE. It was smaller than the others and ripped after the letter E. The note young Lestrade had found at the crime scene said SHERLOCK HOLMES ON OUR SIDE. It was ripped too, right before his name. What if you put them together? MUST HAVE SHERLOCK HOLMES ON OUR SIDE. The fiend must have had that note with him! But, perhaps as he struggled with his victims, as he did his gruesome deed, it was pulled from his pocket … ripped in two, and left on the ground. Aware that something incriminating remained at the scene, Beatrice searched the area and found one half. But why was that maniac carrying the note in the first place? Why did he want ME on his side? Or did Beatrice?

He is nearing Bethnal Green. Again, he senses that two figures are pursuing him, one on the ground and one up above. Darting around a corner, he stops. No one comes.

He reaches Church Street, and turns into big Bethnal Green Road. The rookery is in there, a few strides up Church and then to the left. He can actually smell it. It is renowned for it odors – human refuse in pools, slaughter houses, the boiling entrails and fat of animals, used by the rich for dog food, but here for human sustenance. Drunks lie about on the small streets. Herds of families live together in bedraggled, broken-down buildings. Tradesman, dustmen, costermongers, and silkweavers live mostly on its exterior, leaving the rotting core to criminals, prostitutes, and the desperately poor. John Bright often cries out for the Old Nichol Street Rookery in his speeches. “England,” he says, “has forgotten one of its children: ugly, diseased, forsaken; the East End of the East End.”

Sherlock Holmes has never been inside this rookery. He can feel his knees shaking. He turns down Church and then left onto a smaller road. He can hear people screaming, babies crying, their little voices hoarse. At first, he sees no one. Then he comes to Old Nichol Street itself. The buildings are short and skinny, made of brick or stone, or of tumble-down rotting wood; many doors are wide open. It is nearly pitch-dark, not a single gas lamp evident. On the cobblestones, the scene is revolting. A row of children, ten or so in number, lie almost naked on the filthy road among piles and pools of animal and human refuse. Fast asleep, some are so still that they may be dead. A pig snorts near them, a hag is shrieking from a little window at an unseen foe. The smell is overpowering. It almost turns Sherlock’s stomach. He hears the sound of footsteps echoing in the distance, and looking down the street, he can make out three shadowy men chasing a girl, a “lady of the night,” though she is dressed like anything but a lady. The boy can tell from where he stands that her long hair hangs in sweaty clumps, likely filled with lice, her cotton dress is stained and ripped and torn. She is in bare feet. As they near, he sees the terror on her face. She is dark-haired, like Beatrice, dark-eyed like her too; in her fearful grimace he sees missing teeth. The men are shouting now, and she is screaming. She is clutching something in her hand. Perhaps a coin, maybe a morsel of food: something they want? This poor young prostitute is Beatrice’s age, just fourteen or fifteen. She sees Sherlock and reaches out for him. He can see – through the grime – that she might have been as beautiful as Beatrice, had life been different for her. His former friend, but for her job and meager education, could be this girl, running for her life in the Nichol Street Rookery.

“Help me!” she cries.

At that very moment, a bat-like figure appears above them on the only building of any height on the street – a two-storey stone edifice, the words Jackel, Butcher imprinted in chipped letters on the front.

“CHAOS!” it shrieks.

Sherlock looks up and freezes. It spreads its wings. It is about to leap, all the way to the ground; its target … the girl. The villains in pursuit of her freeze too. Then the Spring Heeled Jack spots Sherlock Holmes. He turns to him. That face. It looks like someone he knows. But it isn’t him. It can’t be! The expression is distorted, the eyes red, veins pop out on the forehead, the hair is disheveled, sticking up in places like devil’s ears, and when it speaks a blue flame ushers from its mouth. But most disconcerting are the eyes. They look down at the boy with evil glee, a disturbed intent, as if the mind behind them is as mad as the worst lunatic in the Bethnal Green Asylum.

“SHERLOCK HOLMES!” it cries. Then it descends.

Just as it is about to crush him, Sherlock hears footsteps smacking toward him, clop- clop on the cobblestones like a racehorse down the stretch … and catches sight of Sigerson Bell coming at him out of the corner of his eye. His face is distorted too, devilry in it. He is in on it after all, thinks Sherlock – trust no one. Bell leaps, a long, fantastic leap, and in midflight, strikes the boy right in the chest. Sherlock hits the cobblestones, and all the air is driven from his lungs. He lies there beneath the bizarre apothecary, gasping for air, feeling like he is dying. He looks up into the cold black London sky. There are no stars, of course. Beside them, the Jack has struck the hard ground without the anticipated cushion of the boy’s body. But it doesn’t seem to care. It rolls and leaps to its feet. Sherlock expects Bell to get off him and allow the Jack to have him, to hand him over. But the old man speaks into his ear at break-neck