down, Miss Monk nodded once in our direction, which immediately prompted her companion to question her.
Holmes smiled. “Now that Dunlevy has seen us, let us take our leave.” We exited the bar and the air hit our faces in damp gusts as he continued. “You see, my dear fellow, the only way I could feel absolutely sure of Miss Monk’s security was if she had an appointment—not a fabricated one, mind you, but an established fact—that her companion discovered as if by accident. Should she not appear, she will be missed, and Dunlevy knows it.”
We walked slowly down Commercial Street as the skies began to clear. “I have no doubt but that you are aware of every possible eventuality,” said I, recovering my equanimity outside the close confines of the Queen’s Head. Falling into a more comfortable silence, we drifted in the direction of our meeting place with Miss Monk.
By the time we had reached Whitechapel High Street once more, all the revelry and apathy of a hedonistic Carnevale permeated the smoky atmosphere. Had Holmes or I wished to lose any of the money in our pockets, every corner boasted either a cardsharp, skittle sharp, or some other variety of bold-faced cheat. As we passed the intersection into the morass of Commercial Road, I confess that I should have doubted the safety of our route had Holmes not so clearly known precisely where he was going. Indeed, I believe that only my friend’s air of total self- assurance prevented us from harm as we strolled down the jaggedly cobbled street.
While I cannot vouch for the history of the Bricklayer’s Arms, it had likely once served as a local guildhall, for it boasted the banner of its trade name above the low-linteled door. It was perhaps eleven o’clock by the time Holmes and I arrived, as we had more than once been forced to extricate ourselves from the attentions of inquiring ladies of the evening. I will be pardoned, therefore, for having expressed a degree of relief when we at last entered the crowded tavern.
A stranger to all, my companion was within half an hour the intimate confidant of every unhappy sot within the premises. Though seeped through with tallow smoke and careless splashes of gin, the atmosphere grew less unpleasant as I realized that Holmes was as at ease in our present environs as he was in our own rooms, and thus I settled back in my chair and tried my own hand at observation. Close upon my right was an elderly fellow, clearly a sailor, I thought, from his tattoos, who declaimed to a curly-headed boy that he had more women at his beck and call in Asian ports than any other seafarer he had either seen or heard tell of. Directly in front of us sat a woman who I imagined to be in mourning owing to her dark garments, then remembered that the denizens of that neighbourhood possessed at the most one entire set of clothing.
When over an hour had passed without a sign of our comrade, I began to shoot Holmes worried glances, only one of which he responded to by pressing my arm reassuringly. My friend was lifting his glass once more in the direction of the barkeep’s daughter when Miss Monk at last appeared at the doorway. Upon spying us, she rushed over, leaping into the nearest chair.
“I’d bet my life that bloke’s onto summat,” she declared delightedly, drawing Holmes’s half-sovereign out of her garments and tossing it back to him. He placed it in his waistcoat pocket and then quite inexplicably glanced down at her shoes.
“Well, then,” he prompted, raising his eyes, “pray report. What did he tell you?”
“Wouldn’t talk about that soldier friend of his for nigh on an hour. Just asks what I’ve been about and who you lads are, and I tells him some stories so everything’s warm and comfortable. Finally he lets on that he thinks he’s found a way to trace Johnny Blackstone.”
“This gentleman grows ever more enthralling,” Holmes remarked. “Did you discover anything further?”
“Only where he lives!” she whispered.
“How on earth did you accomplish that?” I exclaimed.
“Well, when I left him to meet my swells, I’m off with a peck and a nod, but I ducks into an alley to see which way he goes. When he comes out, he walks straight down Commercial Street and ends up on Ellen Street, down a passage or two and into a doss house. I spies a woman at the front entrance, and I offer her a shilling to let on what sort of callers he has. ‘No one,’ says she, ‘but he’s out all hours, and only the devil knows what he’s about. He’s true enough to you, so far as I know.’ Well, I weren’t about to wait around for him to come out again. But I’ll show you his digs, and the woman what keeps the entrance will tell me for a few pence if he’s there, like as not.”
“It is a sterling idea, Miss Monk. I may have a mind to follow him myself tomorrow. Quietly now, and so as not to cause any curiosity over our departure, do take my friend Middleton’s arm and lead us out of the bar.”
CHAPTER EIGHT In Pursuit of the Killer
Heading in a southwesterly direction, we were soon avoiding heaps of debris and rivulets of sewage on our way to Dunlevy’s abode. Miss Monk, freed from the gaze of our fellow bar patrons, let go of my forearm with a comradely squeeze and we traveled three abreast. We had passed a board school, and were nearing a two-story barn housing what sounded like a gentleman’s club in the midst of a celebration, when a pony-driven cart blocked our path as it approached an open gate. The workman sitting upon the small seat of his costermonger’s barrow, a stooped man with spectacles and fingerless gloves, called out impatiently to his animal. To his surprise, his pony shied backward with a nervous neighing sigh. Another attempt to enter met with the same resistance, and as a result, our party trod into the street to cross to the other side.
We had continued for several more paces when Holmes cried, “Wait! The reins, Watson! The reins in that man’s hand, they were slack, were they not?” Without awaiting a reply, he turned on his heel and flew back toward the gate and the fretfully pawing pony, whose owner had temporarily abandoned the project and gone inside the club.
Miss Monk turned a quizzical eye toward me. “They were slack, right enough. But what could that mean?”
I intended to reply, but some instinct instead caused me to run with all my speed after Holmes into the long space between the two buildings. The walls rose at an impossible angle for any light to penetrate from the street beyond, and I could barely make out my friend’s tall form against the opposite mouth of the corridor.
“Holmes!” I called, proceeding forward with one guiding hand on the cold wall. “What is it, Holmes?”
The spark of a lit vesta flared out, revealing my friend’s thin hand and a patch of stone wall. “It is murder, Watson.”
When Holmes lit the bull’s-eye, the sight which had been invisible to my duller senses caused me to gasp in alarm. There lay the very gaunt, sable-clad woman I had noted in the Bricklayer’s Arms not two hours previous. Her eyes were now open and staring, seemingly in disbelief at the rivulets of blood which ran from the gaping gash through her neck onto the ground.
I immediately knelt to see what could be done, but she had breathed her last mere seconds before our arrival. At this observation, a new thought struck me, and I looked urgently up at Holmes as I drew my service revolver, indicating the enclosed yard beyond. He nodded once. Lantern in hand, the detective cautiously advanced the remaining fifteen feet down the end of the corridor until he reached the edge of the threshold and stepped into the shadowy yard.
The attack happened so quickly that it was difficult for me to know exactly what occurred. A dark figure, who had clearly been waiting flat against the wall beyond, focusing all his senses upon our movements, darted behind Holmes and dealt me a powerful blow near the left eye, momentarily stunning me as he tumbled out the street side of the passageway. My next memory, which could only have been a split second later, was of Holmes shouting, “Remain here!” as he left the lantern and took flight after the murderer of the unidentified female, whose eyes, though my own were still painfully blurred, I gently closed as I leaned against the wall.
After bitterly regretting my own stupidity in allowing myself to be assaulted in such a manner, I reflected that the terrain had been far from in our favour—to walk from a narrow entrance into unknown landscape is to invite ambush—and I soon left off cursing my ill luck to ponder what use I could be where I was.
Upon approaching the gate, I nearly collided with the workman from the pony cart, which remained where we had left it, the animal still tossing its head in indignation at the proceedings. The driver had evidently gone inside and brought back with him a few lit candles and several of his comrades, many of foreign appearance, all respectably dressed and glaring at me suspiciously.
