Holmes also noted the shelving and approached it, leaving his revolver on the table. When he reached out a hand for the jar beside the cat, the creature screamed in a hoarse, pining tone and fled to the middle of the stairs.
“Never mind the Admiral,” the old woman said, laughing. “He ought not to be frightened of you. He is safe enough, after all.”
“Why do you say the cat is safe?” asked Holmes intently.
“Well, that is obvious, isn’t it? He hasn’t any tail.”
My friend methodically returned the jar to its space beside the imposing bound volumes while stating, “Your son is a scholar.” I could just make out the contours of what the glass vessel contained, and concluded that Leslie Tavistock’s horror had not been quite as unmanly as I had assumed.
“Are you gentlemen friends of Edward’s?”
“Our respective occupations have thrown us very much together in the past few weeks.”
“I see—I thought perhaps you knew him. My son is not a scholar. The books belonged to my late husband.”
“And his studies held no interest for Edward?”
“Just so. The two of them could not have been more different, if you wish to know the truth of it.”
“That is very interesting. I have always thought fathers and sons are often alike.”
I little knew why Holmes was so intrigued by the tiny crone’s conversation, but his soothing tones and the sweltering heat of the room were beginning to have a soporific effect on me.
“I have heard that said also. But not in this case. My husband was a scholar, as you said. That is one difference. He was physically very imposing, which is another. And also my husband had a very weak temperament.”
“In what way?”
“If you must know, he had no ability whatever to master himself. I suffered for his weaknesses, when he was still alive.”
“But Edward did not?”
“Oh, no,” she said proudly.
“Then he was away at school?”
“No indeed. He was here for the worst of it. But that was of no consequence. Edward cannot be hurt, you see.”
“I am not sure that I understand you, ma’am.”
“He is blessed that way. Oh, he would cry at first, when he was very, very young, but he soon acquired his gift of strength, and there was an end to his suffering. I prayed every day for him to be blessed with the gift, and finally my greatest desire was granted me. He was eight, I believe—a terrible day that had been, I remember. I think it was the day the Admiral lost the first bit of his tail. But Edward has the gift now, and he can never suffer again.
“I sometimes wish I had prayed so much for the Admiral,” she mused. “It would have spared him a great deal to have the gift too. But as I said, the dear creature needn’t worry now.”
She laughed contentedly at this and held her hands out toward the dying fire.
Her movement drew my friend’s attention to the scuttle, which was brimful with fuel. “Have you another coal hod, Mrs. Bennett?”
“No indeed. What would I want with another coal hod?”
“Did your son refill it for you before he left?”
“I don’t believe so. He’s lit quite a blaze for us, as you can tell. But if we need more coal, there’s a supply down in the basement. You just go through that trap under the staircase, you see.”
Holmes knelt down to touch the floor and then recoiled as if he had been burned.
“What has he done?” he cried. “Open the door, Watson, quickly!”
My friend lifted Mrs. Bennett from her chair, and the three of us flew outside under the chilling night sky. We had not gotten five strides from the chamber when a sound like the roar of a crashing wave over the side of a storm-tossed ship washed over us and I was thrown to the bitter ground.
It seemed that I could not move for several minutes, but I was in no position to judge time accurately. I know I heard my name spoken three times, each with increasing violence and urgency, but from very far away. Perhaps only seconds passed before I managed to sit up, but when I did so, I felt a sudden splintering pain at my side, and my eyes flew open with the shock of it.
When I looked around me, I faintly noted that the courtyard was flushed with a flickering light. I met the eyes of Holmes, who lay several feet from me and had not yet managed to raise himself from the ground. Mrs. Bennett lay sprawled on her back upon the stones and did not move.
“Are you all right, my friend?” Holmes breathed.
“I think so,” I returned. I began to crawl toward them. “Holmes, you are not hurt?”
“Nothing to signify,” said he, raising himself on his forearms, though I could see in the eerie light that his head bled in a slow trickle, and either he had touched it with his hand or that appendage was bleeding as well.
“What happened?”
“The basement was on fire. When the trapdoor disintegrated…”
“What the devil has he done, Holmes? He has destroyed his own refuge.”
“He has indeed,” my friend replied hollowly. “From which we can draw only one conclusion.”
An icy chill of despair engulfed me at the inevitable inference.
“He no longer has any use for it.”
Holmes’s lids descended hopelessly for a moment, and then he turned his attention to the lady. “Mrs. Bennett?” he said, touching her shoulder. Her glassy eyes were open, but she gave no sign. “Mrs. Bennett, can you hear me?”
She shuddered slightly. “Where are we?” she asked.
“There was an explosion. Can you move at all?”
“I do not like to try,” she murmured.
“Then do not attempt it.”
“I wonder if the girl is all right.”
“What girl?” my friend asked.
“Gently, Holmes,” I whispered. “She is quite mad, after all. We must not alarm her.”
“Can you tell me what girl you mean, Mrs. Bennett?”
“I can hardly say exactly,” she sighed. “My son had a friend. I don’t know what they were doing. There is little enough to see upstairs. He was going to show her the stars, perhaps, through the broken window. They would look different through a broken window.”
My friend staggered to his feet and made at once for the door, which I now saw had been blown partially off its hinges. The walls of the chamber within were painted with orange flame, and smoke poured from the now glassless front window.
“Holmes!” I shouted. I managed to stand, but only with a tremendous effort. My friend had tied his scarf over his face, but just as I reached him, he spun around to face me and arrested my movement with a forceful hand on my chest.
“Go to the window!” he cried. He turned and walked into the flames.
One petrifying glance at that room told me Sherlock Holmes was entirely correct. No matter what he found in the upstairs chamber, there could be no return the way he had come. I looked about the yard for a ladder or anything else of use, but saw nothing save a forlorn water barrel. I stumbled desperately toward the rotting object and dragged it with considerable difficulty to the alleyway on the other side of the house.
There, my prospects proved more promising. In addition to the barrel, there were several bales of hay at my disposal, and in a flash I recalled, as if from another decade, that Holmes had predicted a stable next to the site where one of the Ripper’s letters had been penned. I could see the window, entirely free of glass and billowing smoke, many feet above my head, and a water pipe running down the side of the building into a tall cistern perhaps a yard distant. Shoving two bales of hay together beside the tank and placing a third on top of them so as to form a makeshift staircase, I heaved the water barrel on top of all, ignoring as best I could the fiery pain in my side.
A moment later, my friend’s dark head appeared through the hole in the wall far above.
