“Nonsense,” he retorted, inhaling a deep draught of smoke. “It was an elementary series of deductions.”
“No, not the inferences. The right cross.”
“Oh, that,” he said, looking down at his knuckles, which were beginning to bruise. “Thank you. That was rather marvelous, wasn’t it?”
Not long after we had dug through the early morning papers and sipped exhaustedly at hot coffee strongly fortified with spirits, a telegram arrived for Holmes. The thin yellow slip read as follows:
My fist closed over the writing of its own volition. I dropped the paper upon the fire. As I turned away from the hearth, it must have been a trick of the moisture in my own eyes that made me imagine the same expression mirrored upon the face of my friend.
CHAPTER THIRTY The Gift
For much of that afternoon Holmes sat in his armchair, perfectly still save for the minuscule movements required to smoke his pipe. The rain cleared in the midmorning, the skies wiped clean of their mists while the mud in Baker Street below scattered from the wheels of the cabs and lorries.
At long last, as evening approached, the pageboy entered with a yellow slip on his salver. Glancing at Holmes, I could not tell whether he might, in his utter weariness, have fallen asleep. I shook his shoulder gently.
“Just read it to me, will you, Watson?”
I tore open the telegram. “‘I am sorry, Sherlock. It cannot be helped. You have full discretion. Godspeed, my dear boy. Mycroft.’”
Holmes remained silent for a moment, pressing at his shoulder absently. “Then that is final.”
“Holmes,” I asked somberly, as he unfurled himself from his chair and rang for his boots, “what does ‘full discretion’ mean?”
“I am afraid I have been requested to undertake a small service by the highest levels of government.”
“I see,” said I. “May I inquire whether the task they wish you to perform is a criminal one?”
Holmes looked startled but soon recovered. “You and I have several times apprehended a culprit only to discover that justice lay entirely upon the side of the lawbreaker. In those instances, we could do nothing more equitable than to let him go. We acted outside of the British courts. This is…similar.”
“So the word ‘discretion’ is used in place of ‘pardon,’” I affirmed.
“My dear Watson—”
“They no longer wish for us to arrest him.”
“No,” he said shortly, and then crossed to the desk in which our revolvers were stored and slipped his gun in his pocket. “My dear fellow, I cannot in any sort of conscience wish you to accompany me.”
“I see. It is possible that you are being selfless, and also possible that you are being merely solitary.”
“I must do what I must, but I refuse to ask the same of you.” He looked me in the face as he leaned back against the mantel. I waited quietly.
“They want me to kill him.”
I nodded in silent sympathy.
“And will you?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion,” he said softly. “Logic appears to have failed me. Among other failings.”
“Holmes, it isn’t remotely your fault,” I stated firmly. “But will you do what they’ve asked?”
“I suppose if we were to look up the dueling codes, the wretch has certainly given me ample cause. And yet, I can’t simply…My dear Watson, surely you’ve no wish to be associated with what is bound to be an altogether ungodly enterprise?”
Though I had never seen Sherlock Holmes so determined, I had also never seen him so at sea. For that reason among a great many others, I could not easily imagine abandoning him in his hour of need.
“I cannot in good faith remain behind,” I considered. “If the evening goes as powers beyond our control desire it to, one or more people will require medical attention before the night is out.”
Holmes smiled gravely and then shook me by the hand.
Squaring his shoulders, my friend strode to the door and tossed me my hat from its peg. “They’ve a valid position, you know. We cannot conceivably leave him to roam the streets, and so we shall at least deprive him of his liberty. Arm yourself as you were, but I do not think we need affect any disguise this evening. For an investigator, a charade is often of the greatest use, but for an assassin, it smacks of skulduggery. I cannot be expected to lose all my self-respect in a single day. I should never be able to take on another case.”
Of Holmes’s pursuit of the world-renowned killer known as Jack the Ripper, little remains to be told. And yet, as the circumstances were so very remarkable, and the outcome so dramatic, I must proceed in my own way. Holmes may decry colour and life in my tales all he likes, but when a winter’s evening prevents our embarkation from Baker Street and he has exhausted his agony columns, still he reads them. But I digress, as he has so often had occasion to remark. I shall do my best to keep to the point.
The cab deposited us at the corner of Thrawl Street, deep in the convoluted warren just south of the notorious Flower and Dean Street. Evening had deepened the skies above us to a hazy sapphire. We walked down a side passage into a small mews with bits of wastepaper dancing in the dark breezes.
“There—I believe that is the den in question.” The detective nodded at a sagging wooden doorframe; an adjacent window patched with greasy paper was illuminated from within by the light of a yellow lamp. “Are you ready, Doctor?”
Edging to the door, my friend placed his hand upon the latch. He threw it open, and we stepped into the room.
A very old woman sat wrapped in a shawl before the fire, the embers of which, though dying, still cast a considerable heat into the room. I feared briefly that we would cause her grave shock by bursting into the room with weapons drawn as they were, but a glance at her fixed, clouded gaze immediately informed me she was entirely blind.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”
“My name is Sherlock Holmes, ma’am,” my friend replied, casting his eyes about the room.
“I don’t know you. But of course, you must have business with my son. Come near the fire; it is wonderful.” The tiny room was so stifling as to be nearly suffocating. “I live upstairs, as a rule. There’s a girl who comes up with food. But the windows have all been breaking, you see, in the night.”
“Have they?” Holmes inquired.
“Yes. My son patched the one on this floor but said the upstairs would require more careful handling.”
“I hope no harm came of it.”
“Oh, no, I don’t imagine a little thing like that could hurt Edward.” She smiled. “Another man, perhaps, but my son is quite remarkable.”
“I have no doubt that is true. Does he happen to be at home, Mrs. Bennett?”
“He’s stepped out for a moment. But who is with you?”
“This is Dr. Watson. We are both very anxious to speak with your son.”
I looked around the room from where I stood by the door. There was a filthy stove with a few pots and pans lying atop it, an ancient sofa, and bookshelves filled with dusty tomes and several glass jars. Lying in a gap between volumes was an ancient, tailless cat whose eyes flicked from one to the other of us in limpid yellow pools.
“Bless you for looking for him here. He doesn’t live here, you know, not even after his father died. He lives in the City. But he has been staying in my rooms more often of late.”
