At the moment Holmes hardly cared where he was. His only concern was the sound of the footsteps ahead of him. They had stopped.
Holmes halted in his tracks.
He simply froze in mid-stride, not daring to move. He remained totally motionless for several seconds. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he lowered himself down on his haunches. He waited for several seconds more, listening intently. Then, crablike, he inched his way over to the side of the nearest building. There again he waited, straining his ears for the slightest noise.
In an instant he heard a sound, a sharp, scratching noise, and then another. Then a faint pinprick of light appeared through the fog. The man had struck a lucifer, a match. And though Holmes could not see him do it, he sensed he was lighting a cigarette. The pinprick of light disappeared and the footsteps resumed, and Holmes rose from his crouched position and once again took up the pursuit.
Several more minutes went by, and the pace continued unabated. Then, with no warning at all, the sound of the footsteps suddenly became less distinct and then faded completely. It was as if a tap, a faucet, had been turned. One minute there was sound, the next minute nothing.
Holmes rushed forward, his heart racing. Flinging caution away, he all but broke into a run. Coming to the intersection of two alleys, he abruptly halted, jerking his head this way and that in a desperate effort to catch the slightest noise. For a moment all he could hear was his own heartbeat. He took a deep breath and held it. He strained to hear.
There it was.
His man had merely turned the corner. The sound of his footsteps was receding off to the right, the cadence once again steady and reassuring. Holmes shook his head and breathed deeply and once again took up the pursuit.
The way had become narrower and winding, the route now twisted and turned and he lost all sense of direction in the fog and darkness.
Within a short while a soft yellow glow from up ahead told him that he was approaching a wider street, a major thoroughfare, and he soon found himself at the intersection with it.
The street he now entered was lined on either side with lampposts on every corner, hazy orbs of light receding into the fog in both directions. Though the street lamps resulted in a slight improvement in visibility, it was very slight indeed, and for the moment he had no idea where he was.
But that was a secondary problem.
His primary problem was that the man he was following was nowhere to be seen, and the sound of his footsteps could no longer be heard.
He had lost him.
Ten
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29-SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 30, 1888
“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”
— The Hound of the Baskervilles
Sherlock Holmes was at a total loss. The darkness and fog, the thick yellow-gray fog — so thick he could feel it against his skin and even smell it — had not only swallowed up the man he was following, caused him to disappear completely, but had caused Holmes to become utterly, hopelessly disoriented.
It was a wasteland all about him, an amorphous, dreamlike wasteland, the street devoid of life, as if the fog had not so much enshrouded everything as devoured everything. In every direction there was emptiness, simply emptiness: No movement, no sound, no shape or form. There was only the fog, pervasive and all-encompassing. It was what silence looks like, he thought.
The feeble glow of the gaslights on the street corners did not help to penetrate the vapors; they merely tinged them a sickly yellow. Where before the visibility was a scant half dozen paces, now, on this well-lighted main street, it was perhaps twice that — no appreciable improvement at all really, because for all practical purposes he was still all but blind. To take a few steps in one direction or the other was to step into a void, swirling and vacuous. It was to walk off the very face of the Earth.
Straining to see, willing himself to see, he could just make out the dark, looming presence of what appeared to be a church across the way, but it took some concentrated study before he recognized it as St. Mary’s. And it was only then that he realized he was standing at an intersection with Aldgate High Street, which he knew led into Whitechapel Road, which had to be the street that receded off into the mists to his left. Well, at least now he was able to get his bearings.
Holmes’s knowledge of the streets of London was extensive, and he had gone to special pains earlier in the day to reexamine at length a detailed street map of the Whitechapel district to refresh his memory of it, so he had a vivid picture of the area in his mind.51 And he was well aware of the options he was now faced with: all too many. The man he was following could have taken any one of several routes before losing himself in the fog. The corner of Aldgate High Street, where Holmes now stood, was not a simple four-way intersection but the confluence of several streets and alleyways, all going off in many directions, a disordered spiderweb of streets that twisted and turned without logic and seemingly without purpose. The streets of Whitechapel dated from medieval times and had not been laid out with any rational thought behind them — they merely happened.
Reviewing his mental image of this maze, Holmes finally made up his mind, deciding on what route to take more out of desperation than conviction. He crossed over to the other side of Aldgate High Street and made toward St. Mary’s Church, a brooding, grim presence in the mists. He hurried past the church without a glance, his pace quickening now that he had committed himself to a destination, and turned into Charlotte Street, little more than a narrow passage located just beyond the church, almost missing it in the fog though he knew it was there. Once again he found himself cloaked in darkness. There were no street lamps here, and the only illumination was the murky, evanescent glow from behind him. Mindful that his silhouette would be outlined against even that feeble trace of light, he kept close to the sides of the buildings, clinging to what little protection they might provide should the man he was pursuing be waiting for him up ahead. He could not discount that possibility, the possibility that he, the hunter, had become the hunted, that his quarry might have somehow become aware he was being followed and was now lurking in the shadows waiting for him to appear.
With that thought in mind, Holmes became doubly alert for any sound, any movement, any obstruction in his path. But there was nothing to impede his groping progress, and no one lurking about to cause him any alarm.
Before long he spotted a patch of brightness up ahead, a hazy light seemingly suspended in the void. He breathed easier. It was exactly where he expected it to be, and he was drawn to it inexorably, like a moth to a flame. As he got closer, the glow became more distinct and he could make out the veiled outline of the public house he knew would be there, the light coming from a soot-blackened globe suspended over the doorway. From the outside the place looked very much like the one he had departed not so long ago: Decrepit, leaning in upon itself tiredly, the single large window looking out onto the street streaked with grime and rendered all but opaque. Holmes knew without trying that there was little he would be able to see by peering through it.
Just across from the pub’s entrance was a convenient doorway set back from the street, and he nestled into it gratefully. It was as good a vantage point as he could hope for, and it provided him with a place of seclusion while he decided on his next move.
The problem that now faced him was a simple one, but if there was a simple solution, it escaped him. He knew that this public house was the closest one from the intersection where he had lost his man. It followed that it was the next obvious place for him to come. But if the man was indeed inside as Holmes prayed he was, it would be foolhardy to enter behind him. Holmes would be spotted the instant he walked through the door. He had not the time nor the ready means to alter his appearance once again, allowing him to adopt yet another persona. He berated himself for not foreseeing this eventuality and preparing for it. It was a rule of life of his that if one was prepared, it — whatever it might be — was less likely to happen.
The wisest course of action — perhaps the only one — was to wait for the man to emerge, if he was in there at all. But if Holmes’s conclusion was wrong, if the man was not inside but had made for some other more distant destination, then valuable time was being wasted, time that would be better spent even wandering aimlessly through the streets in an effort to stumble upon him once again, no matter how futile that effort might seem. There was a risk involved either way, but in neither way did the risk appear justified.
He stood there for several minutes, trying to make up his mind. Then suddenly the door of the pub opened and the decision was made for him. Out stepped the figure of a slim, pinched-faced ragamuffin, the sight of whom gave joy to his heart.
It was one of Wiggins’s band of street arabs, hands burrowed deep in pockets, narrow shoulders hunched against the chill and dampness. Undersized and no doubt undernourished, the boy was wearing a ragged cloth cap several sizes too large that would have dropped over his eyes without fail had his ears not been fortuitously prominent.
Holmes watched as the boy looked up and down the street several times before finally crossing over, glancing over his shoulder all the while as if concerned that he might be followed, unwittingly choosing a path that was taking him right past Holmes’s place of concealment.
Holmes, keeping one eye on the front door of the pub, waited until the boy had gone right past him, was actually a few steps beyond but still only an arm’s length away, then reached out and grabbed him, in one swift motion pulling him back into the confined space of the doorway and placing a hand over his mouth to prevent an outcry. “Gently now, gently!” he whispered urgently, holding the panicking child tightly. “You know who I am. I won’t hurt you.”
The boy, craning his neck around to look at him, his eyes huge with fright, ceased his struggles at once, his legs almost buckling under him, he was that relieved. Holmes took his hand away from the child’s mouth. “Cor, blimey! Is that you, Mr. ‘Olmes?”
Holmes released him, and the boy slumped back against the wall and ran a trembling hand over his mouth. “Cor, oy like to foul meself, oy did.” His voice quavered. “Ya gave me one bloody fright, guv!”
“Tell me your name.”
“I’m Solly. They calls me Solly the Slip.”
“Is he in there, Solly? The man whose description you were given? Did you see him in there?”
“Aye, that oy did, Mr. ‘Olmes,” came the hoarse reply. “I was jist on me wa’ay to find Wiggins to let ‘im know. The bloke walked in boldly as you please, ‘e did — not three minutes ago. Oy spotted ‘im ryght off. ‘E’s wearin’ a long ulster an’ a deerstalker ‘at an’ a scarf ‘at cuvvers ‘is face, an’ ‘e’s got long mustachios an’ strynge oyes ‘at gives ya a chill just to look at ‘em.” He stopped and took a breath and looked out into the street. “Oy was runnin’ off to fetch Wiggins at St. Mary’s Station when ya grabs me.” His thin shoulders began to shake uncontrollably. “Gawd, oy t’ought me gyme was h’up, oy did.” He started to sob.
Holmes reached over and squeezed his shoulder, then awkwardly put an arm around him. “It’s all right, Solly, it’s all right,” he said softly. “There’s a brave lad.”
The boy wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and snuffled loudly, manfully, holding back the flow of tears.
Holmes reached into his pocket. “Here, take this,” he said brusquely but not unkindly. “A little something extra. You’ve earned it.”
The boy snuffled again and nodded, placing the coin in his own pocket with a quick, almost furtive motion, as if fearful this toff with his strange ways and stranger habits would change his mind and snatch it back again.
Holmes pulled him deeper into the doorway and whispered urgently into his ear: “Now, listen carefully. This is what I want you to do...”
When he was finished, he made the boy repeat the instructions aloud. Then, with a parting pat on the shoulder, he sent him scurrying off on his errand. St. Mary’s Station, where Wiggins was posted, was not far off, and even in the fog little Solly the Slip, knowing the area intimately, would be able to get there in practically no time at all.
Once again Holmes settled down to wait, this time feeling somewhat better pleased with himself, but not so pleased that he forgot to give thanks to whatever saint it was that watched over the fortunes of bumbling consulting detectives. He was lucky and he knew it, and luck was not something he normally gave countenance to.
Holmes again lost track of time during this renewed vigil of his. He had no idea how long he had been standing in the doorway — it could have been twenty minutes or an hour, for there was not enough light for him to see his watch by. But at least the fog had dissipated to a great extent while he lingered, a soft breeze having come from nowhere, leaving the street around him still in darkness, to be sure, but no longer in its shroud of almost total invisibility.
He did not know whether this would prove to be a blessing or a curse, for if he could see, he could be seen.
But it was not in his nature to concern himself with matters over which he had no control: He knew it to be a fruitless exercise. He would manage one way or the other, whatever the situation, having absolute confidence in his ability to adapt to changing conditions.
But this constant waiting, this lurking about in the shadows, was exceedingly wearing. It was not the physical discomfort so much — that he could bear. It was the tedium, the forced inactivity that was most difficult: The inability to keep his brain occupied.
Given the circumstances, he could not help but allow his mind to wander, conjuring up thoughts about this man upon whose pleasure he awaited. Was it not monstrous, he thought, that this single individual, this creature, had precipitated the greatest manhunt England had ever known, and had caused a surge of fear unequaled in modern times — not simply fear, but a phenomenon entirely new to his experience: Mass hysteria.
It was as if a medieval plague had broken out anew, or a kind of contagion hitherto unknown to modern science: A strain of universal insanity that seemed to be spreading through the populace like an epidemic of smallpox or influenza. Women everywhere were afraid to walk the streets unescorted. Men took to going about armed; a brisk business was being done in weighted walking sticks. Foreigners, and those who were perceived as such, were set upon for no reason by angry crowds. Jews and Gypsies, always the first to bear the brunt of unreasoning fears and invariably the blame for universal ills, were being denounced and attacked in the streets. While politicians in Parliament decried police inefficiency and government inaction, ministers in their pulpits and orators on Hyde Park Corner bemoaned the erosion of traditional moral values, and the editorial writers of the press vied for the distinction of printing the most hyperbolic hyperbole. The man had become the devil incarnate, a symbol of all that was wrong with society, a metaphor for the immorality, the utter depravity that had permeated English life.
The press had taken to calling the period the “autumn of terror.” In this instance Holmes wondered if they were guilty not of exaggeration but understatement. Terror had indeed descended upon the city — descended upon it like the fog, affecting everyone, drawing across class lines, clouding judgment and reason and good English common sense.
Holmes almost felt sorry for the man. An imaginative lawyer, he mused sardonically, could probably come up with reasonable grounds for a slander suit in his behalf. He was being made out to be a sort of generic bogeyman, both the cause of and depository for all that was wrong, sick, evil, and ugly in the world. Events which bore not the slightest resemblance or relationship to his outrages were being attributed to him without discrimination.
Only that morning, while stopping at the neighborhood newsagent’s, Holmes had eavesdropped on a conversation between two elderly gentlemen, a conversation that both amused and troubled him greatly. One had asked the other as they picked through the periodicals if he had heard of any new developments in the Whitechapel case.
“Well,” the other gentleman replied por
tentously, “there is the matter of the severed arm.”
“Severed arm?”
“Yaas,” drawled the other. “Seems that about a fortnight ago a portion of someone’s anatomy washed up on the foreshore of the Thames off Pimlico. It was a human arm, severed above the shoulder, armpit still attached.”
“My word!”
“Indeed. They rushed it off to Millbank Street, where it was examined by a surgeon with some experience in limbs of one sort or another, and he gave it as his opinion that it was the right arm of a woman, and that it had been in the water for some two or three days. The police were unable to decide if another murder had been committed or if the arm was placed in the water as a sort of prank by some medical student. There was something about this in The Times around then — are you quite certain you didn’t see it?”
“Mmm, no — missed it, I fear.”
“Well, it remains a mystery still. And it gets better! — or worse, actually. It seems that some workmen digging the foundations for the New Scotland Yard headquarters on the Thames Embankment came upon a torso. Just the torso, mind you, nothing else — no arms, legs, or head. Altogether a rather revolting sight, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Mmm, good Lord, yes.”
“Some police surgeon got wind of it, popped in at the mortuary for a look, and announced: ‘I have an arm which will fit that!’ And would you believe? They brought the thing around and it was a perfect fit — an absolute perfect fit! Now, there’s a pretty puzzle for you.”
“The man’s a fiend!” said the other gentleman with some heat. “Whoever he is, he’s certainly not the product of an English public school, I can tell you.”52
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors Page 13
