The Secret Fiend

doubt me.”

“Well –”

“No, Sherlock, I understand. What I told you would seem quite ridiculous, if you weren’t there. I don’t know ’ow you did not laugh out loud. But you were too polite.”

“I did not mean to make light of your ordeal. Nor did I mean to suggest that you were in any way enamored of me.”

“But I am.”

Sherlock is taken aback. Those big black eyes look yearningly up at him. A beautiful crow, he thinks, a beautiful crow indeed. “Excuse me?”

“I do like you, Sherlock ’olmes.” She glances down shyly, but then looks boldly up at him. “There is no use in denying it anymore. I cannot lie. I think you have become a fine young man.”

The boy is tongue-tied. No one, since his mother was alive, has said anything like this to him. Beatrice notices that he is having trouble speaking and wants to help him, so she goes on.

“I am ’onored that you would think that I ’ave affection for you.”

“Well … I …”

“And I am sorry to ’ave bothered you about all of this. Master Lestrade ’as many plans for ’ow he will investigate it. I am thankful for that.”

“Perhaps … perhaps I could …”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps I might investigate just a little more too.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“And ’ow will you do that?”

“Will … will you be home this evening?”

“I certainly shall be, Master ’olmes,” she says.

“Then might I see you at your parents’ place of residence? At the shop? About nine?”

“You will be calling on me?”

“You could tell me what happened again, and I shall listen very carefully this time and see if there is anything of interest that strikes me.”

“I ’ope something of interest strikes you, Master ’olmes, I do indeed. I shall see you at nine.”

JACK IN THE NIGHT AGAIN

Sherlock Holmes wonders why he agreed to visit Beatrice Leckie. It was as if she gave him a chemical compound that drugged his senses, as if he didn’t have the will to refuse. He figures it had something to do with the way she looked at him. But he told her he would call on her, so now he has to go. All day at school, he has been dreading this interview.

He tells Bell he won’t be long and heads away. It is after eight o’clock and there’s a pitch-black sky over the city. He crosses the Thames at Blackfriars Bridge and sets a course for his old neighborhood in Southwark. Dangerous London streets lie ahead.

Bravery is important to Sherlock. It is a British characteristic, seen not only in battle against the Spanish Armada and the great Napoleon, but on the playing fields of the nation’s schools. It is also a characteristic that he knows he must have in order to confront evil. So, he always pushes himself to take courage. But tonight, he decides that following a direct route through the dark warrens and alleys toward his old neighborhood would be empty courage, a useless show that might end in his being attacked. There are many thugs and roughs who haunt this parish. He has time – he will take a slightly longer way, down the main thoroughfares, along Blackfriars Road and then up Borough High Street, before he turns off the main road to find the hatter’s shop.

He tells himself that this decision has nothing to do with Malefactor or the Spring Heeled Jack.

But even in the slight flow of evening folks on the wider roads, he can’t shake the feeling that something or someone is lurking behind him, down an alley to the side, or awaiting him up ahead.

By the time he approaches St. George’s Circus, the loud roundabout near the big Surrey Theatre, he has had enough of taking this long route. Dangerous or not, he is sick of wasting his time, upset that he is allowing himself to be fearful.

He swings east down a narrow lane and moves past the stinking domes of the Phoenix Gas Works. Soon the street becomes darker and deserted and his heartbeat picks up. He keeps moving, refusing to look back, even when he thinks he hears scuffling along the cobblestones behind. He finds himself recalling his Bellitsu moves. Then, just before he reaches bigger, busier Bridge Street with its glowing gas lamps – a light at the end of the tunnel – he hears someone call out to him.

“Sherlock Holmes!” says a voice in a hiss.

He has to turn around.

“Chaos!”

The sound appears to be coming from above, on the rooftops. The boy looks up, scanning the uneven horizon of the haphazard stone and wooden structures, some abandoned, others sagging, all shadowy in the night. For an instant, he thinks he sees a human-sized figure up there, dark and batlike, moving away from the edge of a building. It appears to have black, pointed ears, like the devil. The boy stands staring for a moment, frightened as much by his own fevered imagination, as by what he might have seen. He shakes his head to drive away the fantasy and moves on.

As he crosses Bridge Street, he is tempted to stay on it and resume a more circuitous, safer route to the hatter’s shop. But he tells himself that is nonsense. He crosses the street, determined to walk straight toward his old haunts. He enters another lane. Almost immediately everything grows dark. There are no gas lamps here, just the dim glow of candles in one or two windows of the poor little homes and shops. He trips over something. No, it’s someone, who moans. He leaps, jumping over the body, but when he regains his pace and surges forward, he sees a figure coming the opposite way, toward him.

“Ah, ’ere we is!” it cries. The voice is bizarre, a growl ushered up from an inhuman throat. Sherlock can’t see the figure clearly. It looks as if it is wearing fur. He veers to the other side of the street, but it keeps coming at him.

“You can’t run from me! I is more than one folk. I is everywhere!”

Sherlock can see him now, a beggar in bare feet, wearing rags, indeed made of furs, as if he were a caveman from prehistoric times. His hair is white on one side, black on the other: his face old and wrinkled, with calm eyes on the left, young and wild on the right. He has suffered some horrible disease or injury. He reaches out for the boy. Sherlock delivers a blow, the most severe he can muster, right from the toolbox of the Bellitsu art, produced with his left hand – his best – from a balanced stance, brought up from below the chest, turning his hips as he follows through. The beggar goes down instantly and for seconds is dead silent. Then, he utters a groan.

Holmes begins to run. Why did I hit that poor wretch? Why am I running? He wants to turn back and help the beggar to his feet. But then he hears that voice again, the one he heard in the other lane, calling to him from above.

“Sherlock Holmes! Chaos!”

He turns, glances up, and thinks he sees a winged shadow, high on a building again. But he doesn’t pause. He turns back and sprints until he is all the way to Borough High Street. Stopping there for a moment under a gas lamp, his chest heaving, he changes his plans. He will give in: angry with himself, he makes his way along this well- lighted main thoroughfare. He moves quickly in the thin crowd under the lamps – seeing tradesmen getting home late, couples out for entertainment, men for drinks – past the shops and offices, under taller buildings and awnings. By the time he nears Mint Street, he has calmed down considerably.

But now, as he turns off the wide road, he must make his way through a few more narrow lanes to get to the hatter’s shop. He shouldn’t be afraid here: this is his old neighborhood of friendly buildings and little businesses. If anything, he should be sad. When he last came here, he had held his dying mother in his arms. But he can’t stop