Death at the Diogenes Club: a Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery (The Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mysteries Book 6), page 17
The man caught sight of us at the same moment, gasped audibly, dropped the crowbar, and launched himself headlong down the stairs, trying to run away.
There was a stack of empty wooden packing crates leaning against the side of the tavern. I gave them a quick shove, and the whole pile toppled over, landing at the foot of the stairs just as the would-be burglar’s feet hit the ground.
He tripped, crashed, and landed in a tangled pile of splintered wooden boards.
Jack hauled him up by the back of his collar, studying him. “Doesn’t look like he’s our man.”
“No,” I agreed.
By Susan’s description, Miller was dark and slim. This man was fair-haired, with a scruffy, unkempt beard and watery blue eyes.
“I wasn’t doing nothing!” The man’s voice was high, frightened-sounding, and he dangled in Jack’s grasp, not even trying to free himself. “The place belongs to a friend of mine. He said I could bunk there for the night.”
“Using a crowbar as a back door key?” Jack didn’t relax his hold. “Try again.”
“Fine, fine!” The man’s voice slid into a despairing whine. “I was breaking in, but I wasn’t going to steal or nothing! I just wanted a warm place to sleep, and I knew it would be empty.”
Jack glanced at me, and I stepped forward. “How did you know that?”
The man blinked, his watery gaze flicking in my direction. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the place, off and on. I haven’t seen any lights inside or anyone come near it in the last week, night or day.”
Now that I was closer, I caught a breath of a sickly sweet, smoky odor that seemed to roll off his clothes.
“Do you know the man who usually lives there?” Jack asked.
The man shook his head. “No. I just noticed the place was empty, like I said. Someone must have paid the rent on it, but then left.”
Jack gave me another questioning look.
I didn’t doubt that the man would have stolen whatever was of value inside the upstairs rooms, but he didn’t seem to be in any fit state to lie about knowing Fred Miller.
In the ambient light coming from the downstairs floor of the tavern, I could see that his skin had a yellowish cast to it. His facial muscles were twitching oddly, and his hands shook.
“I swear I didn’t mean any harm!” He gave me a look of miserable appeal.
I studied him, then gave Jack a slight nod.
Jack released his hold on the man’s collar. “You’ve probably never heard this from the police before, but I’m going to take your word for it. Now move along.”
The blond-haired man looked momentarily dazed, as though he couldn’t quite process that he was being set free. Then he ran off, loping down the alley with a clumsy, shambling gate.
“Opium,” Jack said, watching him go. “He was probably hoping to steal enough to cover the cost of his next pipe.” He glanced at me. “So what now? Do you want to wait and see if Fred Miller comes back? Or go in ourselves and have a look around?”
I considered, but then shook my head. “No, it’s not worth the trouble. If Fred Miller hasn’t been home in the last week, either something has happened to him or else he’s used the money he made from his blackmailing enterprise and moved on.”
Either way, it wasn’t worth our waiting here. If I was going to help Susan, I would have to find some other way of tracking Fred Miller down. But that would take more time than I had this evening.
“Besides, I have to be at the Savoy soon.”
“I’ll walk you,” Jack said.
I stopped myself from asking whether he was sure he felt up to walking. The Savoy was only a bare few minutes from Maiden Lane in any case.
“May I ask you something?” I said instead.
“Will it make any difference if I say no?”
“Well, it might make me abandon all efforts at being polite and bring out the thumbscrews …” I shook my head. “No, you don’t actually have to answer if you don’t want to. I just wondered … you’ve hardly ever spoken of the time you spent as part of Flint’s gang.”
Jack’s gaze was on the street ahead of us, ticking off shadowed doorways and entrances to darkened alleys, watching for any hint of disturbance or danger. I knew it was automatic habit with him by now, picked up from all the nights he’d spent patrolling a constable’s beat.
But at that he glanced at me. “I suppose I was hoping to convince you I’m a decent person. Telling you about all the times I’ve broken the law didn’t exactly seem like my best bet.”
We had turned from Maiden Lane onto Lumley Court. About a block up ahead, a pair of supremely intoxicated men were staggering along towards us, walking arm-in-arm, their voices clashing in drunken song.
Jack watched them for a moment, then said, “Mostly while I was with the Sloggers I worked in Flint’s gambling operations. Breaking up any fights that started. Making sure no one tried to leave without paying their depts. Guarding the door. Or if a rival gang was cutting in on Flint’s territory, sometimes a group of us would get sent out to make them stick to their own neighborhoods.”
“That doesn’t—” I caught myself.
“Sound so bad?” Jack finished. There was a faint bitterness in his voice, but then he shrugged. “It wasn’t. A lot of the time.”
We were passing under the glow of a street lamp. The light reflected in his dark eyes. “I’d be lying if I said I’d never done anything I wish I could wipe out now, though.”
I took a breath and said, quietly, “You’re not the only one who’s ever done things they hated, because there was no choice or because all the other choices were worse still.”
Even now, I could feel the memories—memories of Harriet, of Mary, of Adrian Arkwright—like hungry ghosts, trying to crowd their way back into my mind.
Without thinking about it—without even consciously realizing it—I had taken Jack’s hand. Now I looked up at him. “I think that sometimes we don’t have a choice about what we have to do. We only get a choice about who we are.”
Jack looked down at our joined fingers and was silent a long moment.
“So what’s bothering you about Lansdowne House?” he asked.
“That was the most glaringly obvious change of subject in the history of conversation. But fine.”
I had never told Jack about being held captive in the Lansdowne estate’s ice house or about my nightmares.
But Jack had been honest with me. Maybe I owed it to him to give him honesty in return.
My heart sped up. “I—”
Just ahead of us, two shadowed figures stepped out of a side street, blocking our path. Beside me, Jack went perfectly still.
A carriage rumbled by without stopping, but the two figures didn’t move. They were dressed in dark breeches and coats, with cloth caps pulled down low over their eyes. Both of them carried knives, the blades glittering in the overhead gas lamps.
Shock and fear coursed through me like fire, though I forced both down. I still had the knife in the top of my boot, and Jack was armed with his heavy police truncheon. That ought to give us at least even odds—
Two more men stepped out of the shadows, one likewise armed with a knife, the other carrying a double-bladed axe.
My heart jolted.
I recognized the man closest to us. It was Yates from the coffee house. His nose was still crooked, bruised, and swollen, and both his eyes had turned black.
He should have looked ridiculous, but anything comic was canceled out by the ugly look in his eyes.
The street was nearly empty, save for the two drunken men I’d seen before, both of them still too far off and too inebriated to even realize that anything was wrong, much less offer help.
Snatches of slurred song punctuated by bursts of hilarity drifted to us through the cold night air.
In Dublin’s fair city
where the girls are so pretty
I once met a girl named sweet Molly Malone.
My pulse skittered, hard and fast. The world felt as though it had narrowed, shrinking down to just the scant few feet of space between us and the four men. Other sights and sounds all faded away.
The man with the axe—big and heavy-set—shifted the weapon in his hands and flicked a look from me to Jack and then growled, “We can either do this the easy way, or we can get unpleasant about it. Either way, you come with us.”
I held still, my mind racing as I tried to run through our possible courses of action. I knew that beside me, Jack was doing the same.
The trouble was, I couldn’t think of any alternatives that would allow Jack and I to fight our way out of this and still walk away alive.
Even as I thought it, Yates lunged—not for me, but for Jack—the blade of the flick-knife he held slashing towards Jack’s face.
My breath caught, but somehow Jack anticipated the attack. He leaned out of the way of the knife, spun, and swung with his truncheon, shockingly fast. The blow caught Yates on the arm, making him let out a yell of pain. The knife clattered to the pavement.
But Jack was still fighting with the weakness of his injured leg, and the maneuver had left him off balance. I saw him catch himself against the wall of the building next to us.
Another of the men made a grab for me. I kicked his kneecap, making his leg collapse under him. But there were still two more men behind him …
As I fell back a step, trying to take rapid stock of our position, I realized that the two drunkards had crossed over to our side of the street and come up behind the attackers.
Now, the pair of men abruptly ceased their intoxicated stumbling, stopped leaning on each other, straightened … and resolved themselves into Holmes and Uncle John, both pointing revolvers at Flint’s men.
CHAPTER 25
“Stop.” Holmes’s voice cracked like the flick of a whip.
Yates was on the ground, cradling his injured arm against his chest. The man I’d kicked was on hands and knees, struggling to rise.
The other two men spun to face Holmes, and I saw the big man with the axe eye my father speculatively.
“Don’t try it.” Uncle John’s voice was as clipped and harsh as Holmes’s. “I assure you, I’ve shot far better men than you. Drop your weapons.”
The men must have believed him; knives and the axe fell with a clank to the ground.
I finally managed to decide that I was awake and not hallucinating, though I was still having difficulty in forming words.
“How—”
“Later.” Holmes was eyeing our four attackers with distaste. The steadiness of his hand as he trained the revolver on them never wavered. “Our present circumstances are somewhat melodramatic. Besides which, I believe further conversation will be more productively carried out in private. Watson and perhaps Constable Kelly, if you would be so good as to remove these specimens from our presence?”
Uncle John produced pairs of handcuffs from an inner pocket of his brown ulster overcoat.
Jack appeared to be recovering from the shock much better than I was. He moved to take two of the pairs of manacles, snapping them first onto the man at my feet, then onto Yates.
A plain black carriage rumbled down the street and drew to a halt beside us. The driver was so muffled in overcoats and scarves that I couldn’t see his face, but he gave Holmes a respectful wave and a tip of his hat.
Uncle John and Jack hauled the four handcuffed men up and loaded them into the body of the carriage, while Holmes kept the revolver trained in case any tried to get away.
My voice finally worked. “You almost never carry a firearm.”
Holmes shot a sidelong look at me. “I am also not in the habit of rescuing my daughter from marauding street gang members. But unfortunately, this appears to be a case of there being a first occurrence for everything.”
Uncle John slammed the door to the carriage closed, the driver picked up the reins, and the carriage rumbled away up the street.
“Where are they being taken?” I asked.
“To a secure location, where some men in my employ will keep a close watch on them until we can decide what is best to be done with them.”
“Isn’t that otherwise known as kidnapping?”
“I find it unlikely in the extreme that any of them will press charges, considering where they themselves stand in relation to the law. However, Lestrade is aware of our operations tonight. I requested his cooperation in ignoring justifiable means to an end.”
“Requested?”
Uncle John had come back to us. “Say demanded and you would have a more accurate description.”
“In any case, thank you. Both of you,” I told them.
Jack turned and came back to face Holmes, his posture braced. “This is my fault, sir. I didn’t think we were followed tonight, but I must have been wrong. Those were Flint’s men. And he’ll only send more of them.”
His voice was even, but I could almost feel the anger rolling off him in waves. He didn’t look at me.
“It’s me he’s after. If I go to him now, without a fight, he’ll leave Lucy alone.”
An invisible hand wrapped around my chest and squeezed.
Jack would do it. I could see it in his expression. He would walk straight back to Cheapside and Flint—and possibly not survive whatever happened next.
“You don’t know that!” I said. “And I’m the one who came to St. Giles tonight. Even though I was watching for any signs that I was followed, I could have missed it. I could have led them straight to your door.”
I’d also dragged Jack out—and wearing his police uniform too, something that would make it infinitely harder to persuade Flint of his loyalty. Sickness lurched through me.
Holmes held up a hand. “While a willingness to admit fallibility is usually an admirable quality, in this case, you are wrong. I believe it unlikely that either of you were followed.”
Jack frowned. “What do you mean?”
A pair of theater-goers—a man and woman—hurried past us, no doubt on their way to an evening performance. Holmes waited for them to pass before saying, “You have not yet asked how Watson and I came to be here tonight. We are here because I have had Flynn and some of the other Irregulars watching the Savoy Theater for any signs of trouble. Tonight I received an urgent message, saying that groups of tough-looking men were positioning themselves at various points on the streets surrounding the theater. Covering all possible routes by which you might approach.”
I went cold. “They were waiting for me.”
Holmes tipped his head in acknowledgement. “In our guise of inebriated revelers, Watson and I made a complete circuit of the Strand. We identified no fewer than six groups of men such as the ones who accosted you here.”
“But why? What could Flint possibly want with me? He shouldn’t even know that I exist, except—” I broke off, pieces slotting together in my mind like the parts of a puzzle. “He must have been acting on orders. Orders from the same person who hired him to steal the weapons, the same person who tried to have Lord Lansdowne killed at the Diogenes and who planted the bomb on Mr. Dimitrios this morning. Flint’s headquarters were raided by the police, but Flint himself escaped. He must have gone to the person who hired him and bargained—negotiated—for the police attention to be withdrawn.”
Jack was listening, a grim set to his mouth. “Whoever it was must have given Flint one more chance to show he could be useful.”
“By kidnapping me,” I finished for him. “But why? For leverage? Or information?”
“Either of those, I should imagine,” Holmes said. “You were present this morning during our meeting with Lansdowne and the armaments dealers. Your name was given. Anyone wishing to pressure Mycroft and myself to leave off the investigation of the stolen weapons—or to learn how far our investigations had progressed—might reasonably move to kidnapping you as a solution.”
Holmes spoke calmly, but I could hear the undercurrent of anger in his voice as well.
This was exactly what he had feared, from the moment I had joined him in our first criminal investigation.
“So you think that one of those men—” I mentally ran through them. Lord Lansdowne. Edward Barton. Sir Andrew and Lord Armstrong. Mr. Dimitrios.
“Not necessarily. Our association has become known to a widening circle of people. And you were also at the Diogenes Club.”
I scarcely heard him. Fingers of ice were compressing my lungs, stealing my breath. “This is all my fault.” I turned to Jack. “Flint’s men have just seen you with me. That puts you in danger. And Becky—” My breath caught and I spun back to Holmes. “Where is she? If she’s back in Baker Street, she could still be—”
Holmes interrupted me. “Miss Kelly is as safe as the four police constables stationed by Lestrade at the front and back of the house can make her. And the men who saw you and Constable Kelly together tonight have not—and will not—have the opportunity to make their report to Flint.”
“We can’t hold on to them indefinitely, though.”
“We will not need to. A short delay will be all that is required, one in which we change our approach to Flint and his gang from a defensive stance to an offensive one.”
Jack studied my father’s face. “You have a plan, sir?”
“I believe so.”
Uncle John was watching me with a worried expression. “Lucy, my dear, perhaps you ought not to perform at the Savoy tonight. I could go there now and make your excuses, say that you were unavoidably detained—”
The Savoy and tonight’s performance of The Yeomen of the Guard.
I couldn’t imagine the two separate parts of my life—acting and detection—ever feeling more completely divorced from one another as they did right now. But I shook my head.
“No, I’m all right, I can go on.” I glanced at my father. “As long as it’s safe for us to wait until after the performance is over to move against Flint?”
“Indeed, if you could smuggle us all into the theater after the rest of the company has departed, it might be to our advantage. Our other alternative involves a return to Baker Street for theatrical supplies, which with the police guarding the door would involve a good deal of tedious explanation as to the nature of our activities tonight.”
