suspended there. Then the whole thing toppled on to its side, with Harriman disappearing from sight. The horses kept running, but they had become separated from the carriage and took off into the darkness. The curricle slithered and span, finally coming to a halt right in front of us, and for a moment I thought we would crash into it. But Holmes still had the reins. He guided our horse around the obstacle, drawing it into a halt.
Our horse stood there, panting. There was a bloody streak along its flank and I felt as if my every bone had become dislocated. I had no coat and I was shivering with cold.
‘Well, Watson,’ Holmes rasped, breathing heavily. ‘Do you think I have a future as a cab driver?’
‘You might have one indeed,’ I replied. ‘But don’t expect too many tips.’
‘Let us see what we can do for Harriman.’
We climbed down — but one glance told us that the pursuit was over in every sense. Harriman was covered in blood. His neck was so badly broken that, although he lay sprawled out with his palms down on the surface of the lane, his sightless eyes stared up at the sky and his entire face was contorted by a hideous grimace of pain. Holmes took one look at him, then nodded. ‘This was no more than he deserved,’ he said.
‘He was a wicked man, Holmes. These are all evil people.’
‘You put it quite succinctly, Watson. Can you bear to return to Chorley Grange?’
‘Those children, Holmes. Those poor children.’
‘I know. But Lestrade should by now have taken charge of the situation. Let us see what can be done.’
Our horse was full of fire and resentment, its nostrils steaming in the night. With difficulty we managed to turn it round and drove slowly back up the hill. I was surprised how far we had come. The journey down had been a matter of a few minutes. It took us more than half an hour to return. But the snow seemed to be gentler and the wind had dropped. I was glad to have time to collect myself, to be alone with my friend.
‘Holmes,’ I said. ‘When did you first know?’
‘About the House of Silk? I suspected that something was amiss the first time we came to Chorley Grange. Fitzsimmons and his wife were consummate actors but you will recall how angry he became when the child that we questioned — a fair-haired boy by the name of Daniel — mentioned that Ross had a sister who worked at The Bag of Nails. He covered it well and tried to make us believe that he was annoyed that this information had not come to us sooner. But in fact he was furious that anything had been told to us at all. I was also puzzled by the nature of the building opposite the school. I could see at a glance that the wheel tracks belonged to a number of different carriages, including a brougham and a landau. Why should the owners of such expensive vehicles be coming to a musical recital by a group of anonymous, deprived boys? It made no sense.’
‘But you did not realise…’
‘Not then. It is a lesson that I have learned, Watson, and one that I shall remember for the future. In the pursuit of a crime, a detective must occasionally be guided by his worst imaginings — which is to say that he must put himself in the mind of the criminal. But there are limits beyond which any civilised man will not allow himself to stoop. Such was the case here. I did not imagine what Fitzsimmons and his cohorts might be involved in for the simple reason that I did not wish to. Like it or not, in future I must learn to be less fastidious. It was only when we discovered the body of poor Ross that I began to see that we had entered an arena different to anything we had formerly experienced. It was not just the cruelty of his injuries. It was the white ribbon tied around his wrist. Anyone who could have done such a thing to a dead child must have a mind that was utterly, completely corrupt. To such a man, anything would be possible.’
‘The white ribbon…’
‘As you saw, it was the token by which these men recognised each other and which would allow them entrance to the House of Silk. But it had a second purpose. By looping it around the child’s wrist, they made an example of him. They knew that it would be reported in the papers and would therefore act as a warning, that this is what would happen to anyone who dared cross their path.’
‘And the name, Holmes. Is that why they called it the House of Silk?’
‘It was not the only reason, Watson. I fear the answer has been in front of us all the time, although perhaps it only became obvious in retrospect. You will recall the name of the charity which Fitzsimmons told us supported his work? The Society for the Improvement of London’s Children. I rather think we have been pursuing the House of SILC — and not Silk. That must surely have been its origin at any rate. The charity could have been constructed precisely for these people. It gave them the mechanism to find the children and the mask behind which they could exploit them.’
We had reached the school. Holmes handed the dog cart back to its driver with an apology. Lestrade was waiting for us at the door.
‘Harriman?’ he asked.
‘He is dead. His cart overturned.’
‘I can’t say I’m sorry.’
‘How is your officer, the man who was shot?’
‘Badly hurt, Mr Holmes. But he’ll live.’
Unwilling though I was to enter the building a second time, we followed Lestrade back inside. Some blankets had been brought down and used to cover the police officer who had been shot by Harriman and the piano, of course, was silent. But apart from that the House of Silk was much as it had been when we had first entered it. It made me shudder to return, but I was aware that we still had unfinished business.
‘I have sent for more men,’ Lestrade told us. ‘It’s a nasty business we have here, Mr Holmes, and it’s going to take someone a lot more senior than me to sort it out. Let me tell you that the children have been sent back to the school on the other side of the lane and I have two officers keeping an eye on them, for all the teachers in this horrible place are implicated in what’s been going on and I have them all under arrest. Two of them — Weeks and Vosper — I think you met.’
‘What of Fitzsimmons and his wife?’ I asked.
‘They’re in the drawing room and we’ll see them shortly, although there’s something I want to show you first, if you can stomach it.’ I could hardly believe that the House of Silk could hold any further secrets but we followed Lestrade back upstairs, he talking all the while. ‘There were another nine men here. What am I to call them? Clients? Customers? They include Lord Ravenshaw and another man who will be well known to you, a certain doctor by the name of Ackland. Now I can see why he was so keen to perjure himself against you.’
‘And what of Lord Horace Blackwater?’ asked Holmes.
‘He was not present here tonight, Mr Holmes, although I’m sure we’ll find that he was a frequent visitor. But come this way. I’ll show you what we’ve found and see if you can make sense of it.’
We walked along the corridor where we had encountered Harriman. The doors were now open, revealing bedrooms, all of which were luxuriously appointed. I had no wish to enter any of them — my very skin recoiled — but I went in after Holmes and Lestrade and found myself in a room draped in blue silk with a cast-iron bed, a low sofa and a door leading into a bathroom with piped water. The opposite wall was taken up by a low cabinet on which stood a glass tank containing a number of rocks and dried flowers arranged in what amounted to a miniature landscape, the possession of a naturalist, perhaps, or a collector.
‘This room was not in use when we entered it,’ Lestrade explained. ‘My men continued along the corridor to the next room, which is nothing more than a storage cupboard, and they only opened it quite by chance. Now, look over here. This is what we found.’
He drew our attention to the tank and at first I could not see why we were examining it. But then I realised that there was a small aperture cut into the wall behind it, perfectly concealed by the glass so that it was virtually invisible.
‘A window!’ I exclaimed. And then I grasped its significance. ‘Anything that happened in this room could be observed.’
‘Not just observed,’ Lestrade muttered, grimly.
He took us back out into the corridor, then threw open the door of the cupboard. It was empty inside but for a table on which stood a mahogany box. At first, I was not sure what I was seeing but then Lestrade unfastened the box which opened like a concertina and I realised that it was in fact a camera and that its lens, at the end of a sliding tube, was pressed against the other side of the window that we had just seen.
‘A quarter plate Le Merveilleux, manufactured by J. Lancaster and Son of Birmingham, if I am not mistaken,’ Holmes remarked.
‘Is this part of their depravity?’ Lestrade demanded. ‘That they had to keep a record of what took
