The Dragon Turn

by Shane Peacock

  She’s right. A glorious future flashes through his mind, their fame riveting London as they live their dreams.

  But then the boy hears his father’s voice, reminding him to be practical at all times, to never be seduced by romantic notions. No woman should marry a detective. “I cannot allow you to have anything to do with Hemsworth. I cannot put you in danger again.”

  Irene’s eyes narrow. “Allow me? Sherlock, I am not your slave, nor will I ever be. I will make my own decisions.”

  “Here, here!” says a loud whisper upstairs.

  Sherlock glares upward. “I am going to prove that Hemsworth murdered his rival, the Wizard of Nottingham, and that this cowardly act was one of the most brutal in the annals of London crime.”

  “Good luck to you, then.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “You know, you may be wrong about that too. It might not be a bad thing if Lestrade revealed your part in all of this. Think about it. Even if it made you notorious, that might be good for you in the long run. I am beginning to believe that any publicity is good publicity.”

  “Wrong!” cries a high-pitched voice upstairs. Now Irene glares upward.

  “Good morning, Miss Doyle,” says Holmes and rises to his feet.

  “Sherlock, honestly, a dragon? They only exist in storybooks.”

  “Not necessarily,” exclaims the voice again.

  Irene begins to make her way out of the laboratory. Holmes is not pleased with her and isn’t moving to see her out. “If I just have a day or two,” he mutters, “then so be it. Lestrade may not be giving me even that.”

  “Well, Saint George, let me know when you slay your dragon.”

  Laughter erupts upstairs.

  Irene stops and sighs. She looks sympathetically at Sherlock. “Though I know this search will lead you nowhere, if I were you, and I wanted more information about Hemsworth, the real goods, I’d start with one Mr. Hilton Poke. He knows everyone’s secrets. I am sure His Highness has some, but as I think you will see, not enough to make him a murderer. Speak to Poke — it might help you consider better suspects.”

  She clatters from the lab and into the outer room. The entrance opens and closes and as it does, the apothecary flies down the spiral staircase and rushes past the boy and out of doors. He is holding a piece of paper and an ink bottle. Moments pass, then he returns. He hands the paper to Sherlock.

  “What is this?”

  “A note to Mr. Poke from Irene Doyle, introducing you. He is a man who is impressed by, shall we say, position. You and I, boy, we have none. Mr. Andrew C. Doyle has much more. Poke will see you if you bear this note. You shall be turned away without it.”

  Sherlock Holmes is well aware of Hilton Poke, the gossip columnist for The News of the World, who is said to know everything about every theatrical star in London, or at least everything that they don’t want the public to know. Much to his shame, Holmes reads the little man’s stories regularly.

  The newspaper’s offices are on Fleet Street, a busy avenue in the very center of London where most publications are headquartered. Sherlock has no other leads, so he heads there early the next morning, out into a day that is already humid. He picks his way through the noisy crowds, past the four-storey buildings that line both sides of the curving street that runs uphill from Trafalgar Square to St. Paul’s Cathedral. He keeps his eye out for blue-coated members of the Force, who might be coming his way with orders to take him to Scotland Yard. But none approach. Halfway down Fleet, he spots the red canopy with the globe and the newspaper’s name. When he tells the lady at the front counter that he has important information for Hilton Poke, he is directed up a staircase and down a hot hallway. The columnist has one of the largest offices in the building, with a good view of Fleet Street. Its mahogany walls are plastered with photographs, drawings, and caricatures of the city’s current theatrical stars. Poke is sitting in his chair with his feet up on his desk, waving a peacock-feather fan in his face. Despite that, the sweat still pours down his forehead and soaks through his white shirt and dark brown suitcoat. His countenance is that of a weasel, his body the build of a beaver. His lispy voice, which he is forever attempting to lower, rises up and down like the waves on the English Channel, and everything he says is spoken as though it were of the gravest importance. His darting eyes rarely meet others’, and they certainly don’t now, as he takes Irene Doyle’s note from the poorly dressed boy. He reads it.

  “Hmmph! Her father was once a name in this town — I suppose he helped a few folks — but he is fast descending. I hear Miss Doyle wants to sing, silly girl. His Highness Hemsworth? Why should I speak with you about him?”

  “Because I know things.”

  Poke studies the boy.

  “What do you know?”

  Sherlock hesitates. “Venus, his assistant, does not …”

  “It is old news to me that she is actually from Brixton. I am waiting for the best moment to reveal that tasty tidbit. Not yet, not a big enough bang available presently.”

  Sherlock had not intended to reveal that morsel about Juliet. He had planned a more meager revelation — merely that Venus wears English-style dresses offstage. “But you can’t tell the public that,” says Sherlock. “That would ruin her, take her job from her!”

  Poke gives him a withering look. “Anything else?”

  Sherlock tries a few other scraps of information he has picked up over the last week, nothing to do with the crime, nothing about the inner chamber. But what he offers is obviously old news to the gossip columnist, or at least of insufficient sensation. Poke takes a few seconds to stare back blankly, as if he were a king and the boy a pauper, then looks away again. So … Holmes plays his ace.

  “I have friends at Scotland Yard.”

  “You?”

  “I am close to Inspector Lestrade’s son.”

  “Yes?”

  “He has given me some inside information, and, using it, we have made some progress on the Nottingham murder. The public knows nothing of it. This is between you and me.”

  Poke leans forward. “What information?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  The fat little man swings his feet off the desk and stands up. “Then you can see yourself out.” He turns to examine his bookcase, as if he has much more important things to do. There are just four or five books on the entire shelf, all biographies of show-business stars, two by Hilton Poke himself.

  Sherlock stays seated. “I believe we can get Hemsworth convicted of the crime.”

  Poke glances around at the boy. “Go on.”

  “If you are willing to tell me all you know about him, it will help us immensely.”

  “My dear boy, I need one of two people to be found guilty of this murder. If you cross your heart and swear to die that you have a reasonable chance to bring either His Highness Hemsworth … or the deliciously intriguing Mrs. Nottingham before the magistrates, then I shall help you. I could care less who really did it. But either of those two in the dock would work well for my purposes. Either would be a sensation!”

  Sherlock reluctantly crosses his heart and hopes to die, something he hasn’t done since he was a small child. “Tell me what you know, Mr. Poke, and I will do what I can. I am guessing the police have not spoken to you … they would not understand the depths of your knowledge of the things that really matter.”

  Poke commences to spill the beans. Most of it is useless gossip and childish rumors about Hemsworth’s private life — sensational stories about the time he was captured in the Far East and brutally tattooed while tied by all four limbs to the ground; tales of the three-headed creatures and talking baboons he found on his travels; the “fact” that when he finishes with the small animals in his acts he guillotines them for amusement; that Venus will soon bear his child; several stories of his taste for drinking blood, and the twice-verified rumor that he was bitten by a vampire. Poke is obviously trying too hard, working at coming up with any morsel he has been fed that mig
ht make Hemsworth look like a killer. Sherlock is disappointed. It is all nonsense. But one thing intrigues him. There is a recurring theme in the columnist’s information.

  “Might I stop you there for a moment, sir?”

  “Intriguing, isn’t it? Too much to take in at once?”

  “You keep mentioning that there is evidence that he is a vampire. That, in itself, does not interest me. It is nonsense. Vampires are figments of the human imagination, arising from our inner fears, placed in stories to thrill and scare people who have no brains in their heads.”

  “Look, boy, if —”

  “But …”

  “But what?”

  “Tell me why your sources believe he is one. It keeps coming up in what you say.”

  “Well … the most telling thing is that he hates the sunlight.”

  “Hates it?”

  “He is nocturnal, my dear. I have heard that from many of my people.”

  “But I saw him rehearsing in the theater one day. And he performs in the evenings under very bright stage lights.”

  “That is not sunlight, you nincompoop. He is rarely seen outside during the day, but he is up all night, every night. We have spotted him on many occasions in the small hours of the morning.”

  Sherlock’s eyes grow wide. “Thank you, Mr. Poke,” he says, springing to his feet and shaking the gossip columnist’s sweaty little hand.

  “But I haven’t told you everything that —”

  Holmes is already out the door and rushing down the hallway.

  Hemsworth is rarely seen during the day. The boy has an idea.

  HIS VAMPIRE WAYS

  Sherlock can hardly wait until the sun sets. He stays out of sight in the shop, never once peeking his head out the door for the rest of the morning or the entire afternoon, contenting himself with his chores, anxious every time there is a knock at the entrance. Then, telling no one, not the police, young Lestrade, Irene, or even Sigerson Bell, he makes his way to The Egyptian Hall. Curiously, he doesn’t leave on time to arrive for the performance. He goes out about half an hour before it ends, while there is still sunlight, and doesn’t stop near the marquee on Piccadilly Street. Instead, he slips down the alley at the side and waits in the growing darkness at the rear. Almost immediately, he hears the audience leaving at the front of the building, then Venus comes out, glances around, and rushes away. Things quiet down, the crowd disperses, and finally, Hemsworth appears, his expression grim, as it always seems to be when he is alone. He heads up the alley and into his hansom cab on Piccadilly.

  Sherlock doesn’t budge. He stays in the shadows, which soon cover the alley and the entire little courtyard at the rear of the theater. Buildings loom on all sides. Darkness descends on London. There are no gaslights here and it grows pitch black. He presses his left arm against his side and feels the horsewhip’s hard, leather surface under his sleeve. He is nervous, and not just because of the lack of light or what he plans to do tonight. His jumpiness has been with him since he left Denmark Street.

  Someone is following him, again.

  He is absolutely sure now. Is it Riyah? Possibly. Could it be Malefactor? He doubts that. But it might be Crew. Whoever it is, he is large, adult size. This would be bad news under any circumstances, but it is especially disconcerting tonight, during this dangerous, post-midnight mission. He slides down against the brick wall of the building adjacent to The Egyptian Hall and tries not to fall asleep. He wishes he could keep surveying the area, as he did when he first arrived. But the moonlight is meager tonight: he can barely see more than a few feet in front of his face. And he keeps hearing things. There is that constant jingle and clap of horses and carriages and other city sounds in the distance, but back here in the dark, there are noises too — the shuffling of feet, it seems, the creaking of boards, and footsteps. He tries to remain still. The hours pass. He hears Big Ben to the south-east at the Parliament Buildings, gonging midnight, then one o’clock, two, and then three.

  Then it happens … just as he suspected.

  A light appears at the other end of the courtyard, in the back alley that leads the other way: out of this tight space and away from the theater, running under a high catwalk between two buildings into narrow Jermyn Street. The artery is barely wide enough for a carriage. Accompanying the light is the sound of four horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, and behind them, now coming dimly into view, a long coach, unique in appearance, built low to the ground like a big casket. Its driver negotiates a little circle in the tight courtyard, bringing his vehicle up to the wide, stable-like door at the back of the theater. A man jumps down from the seat, carrying a bull’s eye lantern. It is the vampire himself … Alistair Hemsworth!

  He unlocks the theater’s wide back door and slides it open. It is elevated about a carriage wheel’s height above the ground, perfect, when fitted with a ramp, for deliveries or horses moving in and out.

  A piece of brick falls from somewhere. It narrowly misses Sherlock. Hemsworth turns and surveys the courtyard. His light almost spots the boy.

  “Just rats,” says someone sitting in the passenger seat in the driver’s box. Holmes hadn’t noticed him before. The boy squints in the darkness and sees the dim profile of a black felt hat, long black hair, and what looks like a greatcoat over the man’s shoulders. Hemsworth jumps up into the stable-door threshold and enters the rear of The Egyptian Hall. In seconds, he is pulling a ramp out from the building and into the back of the coach. He sets it up so he has a bridge. He goes back into the Hall once more and doesn’t come out again for ten minutes or so. Then strange sounds come from just inside the theater — heavy breathing, shuffling feet, and a clanking noise. The vehicle’s passenger gets out and stands facing the commotion — pointing a rifle in its direction. Hemsworth reappears, moving backwards, the lantern around his shoulders, quietly cooing at something he has on a chain. It’s held back by a long pole he has fastened to its neck. It is four-legged, something like eight feet long, its head about three feet high. His Highness is cautious with it — it’s obviously stronger than he is — and it seems to be shackled at the legs. The boy can’t see it clearly, but it appears to be muzzled, too. The other man still has the gun trained on it. The magician bends down and goes into the low vehicle with the creature, keeping more than an arm’s length ahead. When they have disappeared, there is the sound of clanging irons, then Hemsworth pops out of the front of the coach, slams down a door to seal the back from the driver’s box and gets into his seat. The other man lowers his rifle, fastens the coach’s rear door, closes up the building, and moves around to the passenger side. He stops for a moment, and looks at the courtyard and alley again while Hemsworth flashes his light about. Then the passenger crawls up into his seat. Hemsworth snaps the whip, and the horses shoot out the back alley, under the catwalk, and into Jermyn Street.

  Sherlock swings into action, racing from his hiding spot and chasing the vehicle. It turns right at the street. It is going west … in the direction of the Cremorne Gardens. But suddenly, he hears someone shout.

  “Stop!”

  The boy freezes. The voice is familiar, though deeper than he remembers.

  “Who is there?”

  For a moment, there is silence. Then, that voice again.

  “Sherlock Holmes, I perceive.”

  He is on the roof. He doesn’t show himself, but there is no doubt who it is.

  Malefactor.

  “You have returned?”

  “I have never been away.”

  Sherlock looks up and sees a shadowy figure in a top hat and tailcoat, twirling a walking stick.

  “Well, that is lovely to know, and I would be thrilled to hear all your news, but I’m rather busy right now.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You shall not be pursuing this case. It is of interest to me. If he really has a dragon, then I want it. I can use it. A dragon is gold, and believe me, we all want gold … even you, Holmes, though you’d nev
er admit it.”

  “Stay out of this.”

  “Funny you say that, I was just about to add those very words.”

  “I won’t —”

  “Don’t challenge me, Jew-boy. You never should have before. That was a big mistake. And now, my powers have grown.”

  “Odors increased too, I assume?”

  “Yes, you do always assume. You have assumed too much in this case, for example. Freed Hemsworth, did we? Tut-tut.”

  “Go away, Malefactor, or I will make you disappear for good. Remember, I have the law on my side. What do you have? You work alone now, I see.”

  “Oh, believe me, I am not alone. And never shall be. In fact, my web has spun wider and will keep growing. I am getting my education, will make myself into a learned man some day, little one, a scholar with a spotless record even you will not be able to question, someone even Miss Doyle could admire. You shall see. Mathematics is my subject, of course — chaos theory: I think I have it down now. It’s most helpful in my line of business. But despite all of that, from here onward, I will do my best work in the shadows.”

  “Show yourself!”

  “Never!”

  “Coward!”

  “Well, maybe just a little.”

  The figure emerges toward the edge of the rooftop. It pulls a lantern out from behind its back and holds it under its chin, lighting the face in a lurid way. Even from a distance, Sherlock can see the bulging forehead, the sunken eyes, the darting lizard-like tongue, and above it a developing mustache. He looks even taller, a little older.

  “I was forced to take some odd jobs lately, due to you … but as I say, I will soon be a respectable man, a fake like everyone of that ilk. I shall pop up soon in that guise, hidden in plain view. You know what they say … Satan is often a Man of Peace. It is all plotted, the future is set. I hear you still assist a poor apothecary.”

  “It is a passing occupation.”

  “Don’t disown or deny the ones you care for, Holmes.”