Moriarty

19 A Return to Light

After the beating I had received, I was too weak to move. I could only sit there watching as Mortlake balanced the razor at his fingertips, holding it out before him as if to admire its beauty. Never before had I felt so helpless. At that moment, I accepted that I had set too much store by my own capabilities and that all my plans and aspirations were about to come to this bloody end. Clarence Devereux had beaten me. Small consolation that he had briefly felt my fingers around his throat. Their impression would have faded long before he reached the safety of the legation and by then I would be lost in a vortex of pain. I felt hands fall, heavy, on my shoulders. Two of Mortlake’s men had approached and stood either side of me, one of them holding a length of rope. The other grabbed hold of my wrist, preparing to tie me down.

But then Inspector Jones spoke. ‘Hold off!’ he said, and I was astonished to hear him sound so calm. ‘You are wasting your time, Mortlake.’

‘You believe so?’

‘We will tell you everything your master wishes to know. There is no need for this squalid and inhuman behaviour. It has been made clear to us that we are to die in this place so what is to be gained by remaining silent? I will describe to you, step by step, the journey that brought us here and my friend, Mr Chase, will corroborate every word I say. But you will find it of little value. Let me assure you of that now.’ Jones had drawn up his walking stick across his lap as if it might provide a barrier between himself and his tormentors. ‘We have no secrets and no matter how much you debase yourself in God’s eyes, you will discover nothing that will be of any use.’

Mortlake considered, but only briefly. ‘You don’t seem to understand, Inspector Jones,’ he replied. ‘You have information and I am sure you will provide it. But that is no longer the point. My brother Leland died in your custody and even if his killer was completely unknown to you, I hold you responsible and will make you pay. I might start by removing your tongue. That is how indifferent I am about what you have to say.’

‘In that case, I’m afraid you leave me no choice.’ Jones swung the stick round so that the tip faced towards Mortlake and at the same moment I saw that he had unscrewed the raven’s head to reveal a hollow interior. Holding the stick with one hand, he inserted the index finger of the other and twisted. At once there was an explosion, deafening in the confined space, and a great red chasm appeared in Mortlake’s stomach even as gobbets of blood and bone erupted out of his back. The blast had almost torn him in half. He stood there, the knife falling away, his arms thrown forward, his shoulders hunched. A wisp of smoke curled up from the bottom of the walking stick which, I now understood, had concealed an ingenious gun. Mortlake groaned. Fresh blood poured over his lip. He fell to the ground and lay still.

The gun had one bullet only.

‘Now!’ Jones shouted and the two of us rose up from our chairs together, even as the six remaining hoodlums stared in wonderment at what had occurred. With remarkable speed—I would never have expected him to be so vigorous—Jones lashed out with the stick and although it was now useless as a firearm, it struck the man nearest to him in the face, sending him reeling back with blood spouting from his nose. For my part, I seized hold of the rope which would have been used to bind me and pulled it towards me, then swung my elbow into the throat of my assailant who, losing his balance, was unable to defend himself and fell, gurgling, to his knees.

For just one brief instant, I thought that we had succeeded and that against all the odds we were going to make good our escape. But I had allowed my imagination and the sudden reversal of fortune to get the better of me. There were still four thugs who had not been harmed and two of them had produced revolvers. The man whose face Jones had struck was also armed and I could see that he was in no mood for reasoned debate. They had formed a semi-circle around us and were about to fire. We could not reach them. There was nothing to prevent them gunning us down.

And then the lights went out.

The gas lamps, long lines of them stretching in every direction, simply flickered and died as if extinguished by a sudden rush of air. One moment we were trapped, about to die. The next we were plunged into a darkness that was all-encompassing, absolute. I think there might have been a part of me that wondered if I had not indeed been killed, for surely death would not be so very different from this. But I was alive and breathing and my heart was most certainly pounding. At the same time, I was utterly disconnected from everything around me, unable to see even my own hands.

‘Chase!’

I heard Jones call out my name and felt his hand on my sleeve, pulling me down. The truth is that by doing so he saved my life. Even as I dropped to the ground, Mortlake’s gang opened fire. I saw the blaze of the muzzles and felt the bullets as they fanned out over my head and shoulders, smashing into the wall behind me. Had I remained standing, I would have been torn apart. As it was, I was fortunate to avoid any ricochets.

‘This way!’ Jones whispered. He was crouching beside me and, still holding onto my arm, he pulled me with him, away from the men, away from the torture implements spread over the tables, further into the great nothingness that our world had become. There was a second blast of guns but this time I felt that the bullets came less close and I knew that with every inch that we shuffled away, the chances of our being hit were diminishing. My hand felt something. It was the wall of the passageway that had been behind us when Devereux was making his speech and through which we had first entered. Following Jones’s lead I stood up, pressing my hands against the brickwork. I was still blind. But if I stayed close to the wall, it would surely lead me out.

Or so I thought. Before we could take another step, a yellow light glimmered, spreading over the floor and illuminating the whole area around us. With a sense of dread, I turned and saw Mortlake spread out on the ground and, next to him, the man with the beard and the broken nose who had first addressed us at the cemetery. He was holding up an oil lamp that he had somehow managed to light. Despite all our efforts, we had moved only a short distance from the group. Not far enough. Once again, we were in plain sight.

‘There they are!’ he shouted. ‘Kill them!’

I saw the guns turned on me once more and with a sense of resignation, I waited for the end. But we were not the ones who died.

Something invisible punched the man in the head. The side of his skull exploded and a spurt of red liquid burst out over his shoulder. As he tumbled sideways, still clutching the oil lamp, distorted shadows fell over the other five men. They had not yet had a chance to shoot and by the time their companion crashed to the floor, it was too late. The light had gone out again. He had been shot—but by whom? And why? We could not answer these questions now. In the dark or in the light, we were still in mortal danger and would be until we reached the surface and the safety of the street.

Taking advantage of the confusion behind us—our assailants were still not certain what had occurred—we broke into a stumbling run. I was aware of two contradictory impulses warring in my mind. I wanted to be away as quickly as I could but, being quite blind in the pitch dark, I was also afraid of crashing into some obstacle. I could hear Jones somewhere beside me but I was no longer sure if he was near or far. Was it my imagination or was the ground rising slightly beneath my feet? That was the crucial test. The higher we climbed, the more likely we were to reach street level where we might be safe.

And then I saw a light flickering about fifty yards away, a candle lit by a match. How could it be? Who had lit it? I staggered to a halt and called out to Jones, a single word. ‘There!’ It was directly in front of us, a tiny beacon surely designed to draw us out of danger. I had no sense of distance, not knowing even where I stood. I was certain that the candle had been placed there deliberately to help us, but even if it had been lit by the devil himself, what choice did we have? Moving faster, hearing the footsteps of our pursuers close behind, we pressed forward. Another gunshot. Again the bullet rebounded off the wall and I felt brick dust stinging my eyes. A shouted profanity. And then something else, still far away, but coming rapidly closer—a huge sound, a heavy panting, the grinding of metal, and I smelled burning. The air around me became warm and moist.

There was an underground steam train heading towards us, making for Snow Hill, the station that Devereux had mentioned. I could not see it but the sound of it was becoming more thunderous with every second that passed. The darkness had become a curtain in front of my eyes and I was desperate to tear it free. I had a sudden terror that I might have strayed onto the railway tracks, that I would set eyes on the locomotive only when it bore me down. But then it turned a corner and although I still could not see it—I was aware only of its immense bulk—a beam of light suddenly engulfed me, illuminating the arches and the vaulted ceiling in such a way as to make them fantastical, not part of a London meat market but some sort of supernatural kingdom inhabited by ghosts and monsters.

Jones stood beside me and we both knew that the train would have revealed us to our pursuers. It was on a track parallel to the passage where we stood, separated by a series of archways, and as it moved forward the light cut in and out, creating a strange effect in which any movement was reduced to a series of still images such as one might see in a Coney Island entertainment machine. At the same time, smoke was belching out of its chimney and steam billowing out of its cylinders, the two swirling together and embracing each other like two phantom lovers. The train itself was a fantastic thing: the closer it came, the more dreadful it seemed and if this were a kingdom then here, surely, was the dragon.

I looked round; I could not help myself. Four men stood behind me and they were very close, having made faster progress than either Jones or I could manage. They were making use of the sudden illumination that had been given to them. The train would pass by in less than half a minute and it was only while its light was pinning us down that they could finish us. I saw them running forward, there one second, invisible the next, in this terrible black and white world with the beam finding its way intermittently through the gaps in the brickwork and the fumes threatening to smother us all.

Jones shouted something at me but I no longer heard the words. Four men suddenly became three. Another had thrown himself forward, impossibly, a fountain of blood erupting from his shoulders. The train was almost upon us. And then a figure stepped out from behind a mouldering brick column. It was the boy Perry, his face lit up in a demonic smile and his eyes ablaze. He ran towards me, lifting a huge butcher’s knife in his right hand. I fell back. But I was not his target. One of Mortlake’s men had crept up on me, had been inches away from me. The boy plunged the blade into his throat, jerked it out and thrust it in again. Blood curtained down, splashing onto his arms. He was close enough for me to hear his high-pitched laughter. His mouth was stretched open, showing bright white teeth. The roar of the locomotive filled my ears and I was no longer breathing air, only carbon and steam. My throat was on fire.

Darkness. The train had rushed by, leaving only the carriages clanking past, one after another.

‘Chase!’ It was Jones calling my name. ‘Where are you?’

‘Here!’

‘We must get out of this charnel house.’

The candle was still flickering. We made for it, unsure what we were leaving in our wake. I thought I heard the soft thud of a bullet finding its target, not a revolver but some sort of airgun. And the boy was there too. I heard a scream followed by a terrible gurgle as his blade cut through flesh. Somehow, Jones and I linked arms and, choking, with tears streaming from our eyes, we ran forward, aware that the ground was indeed sloping upwards, and more steeply with every step. We reached the candle and saw that it had been deliberately placed at a corner. Looking round it, we saw the moonlit sky. A flight of metal stairs led to an opening. With the last of our strength, we staggered forward and climbed into the faint light of dawn.

Nobody followed us. We had left the horrors of that subterranean world behind. It was quite possible that Devereux’s men had all perished, but even if some of them had appeared there would have been little they could do for we were now surrounded by other people: butchers and delivery boys, market clerks and inspectors, buyers and sellers, creeping in silence to their work. We saw a policeman and rushed towards him.

‘I am Detective Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard,’ Jones gasped. ‘I have been the victim of a murderous attack. Call for reinforcements. I must have your protection.’

God knows what we must have looked like, drawn and desperate, bruised and covered in blood, our clothes dishevelled, our skin streaked with dirt and soot. The policeman looked at us with equanimity. ‘Now, now, sir,’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’

The sky was already turning pink when we made our way back to Camberwell. I had travelled with Jones—I could not return to my hotel until we had seen the conclusion of the night’s work together. We had spoken little but as we reached Denmark Hill, seated together in the carriage that the policeman had eventually been persuaded to provide, he turned to me.

‘You saw him.’

‘You mean Perry, the child who led us to Bladeston House?’

‘Yes. He was there.’

‘He was.’

‘I still do not understand it, Chase…’

‘Nor I, Jones. First he tries to murder you at Scotland Yard. Now it is as if he wished to save you.’

‘He and the man who was with him. But who were they and how did they find us?’ Jones closed his eyes, deep in thought. He was close to exhaustion and would have slept but for the uncertainty of what lay ahead. We only had Devereux’s word that Beatrice had been returned and we had no reason to trust anything he said. ‘You did not tell them about Perry,’ he continued. ‘When Devereux asked you how we found our way to Highgate, you did not say that we had followed the child from the Café Royal.’

‘Why should I have told him the truth?’ I said. ‘It seemed better to leave him uncertain. And it was more important for me to hear him freely admit to the murder of Jonathan Pilgrim. He did so. Of course, we always knew he was responsible, but now we have heard it with our own ears and can testify to it in a court of law.’

‘If we can ever drag him before it.’

‘We will, Jones. After tonight, he cannot be safe anywhere.’

We reached the front door of Jones’s house but we had no need to open it. Seeing our carriage pull up, Elspeth came flying out, her hair loose and a shawl around her shoulders. She fell into her husband’s arms.

‘Where is Beatrice?’ Jones asked.

‘She is upstairs, asleep. I have been worrying myself to death about you.’

‘I am here. We are safe.’

‘But you are hurt. Your poor face! What has happened to you?’

‘It is nothing. We are alive. That is all that matters.’

The three of us went into the house. The fire was blazing and breakfast was already being cooked but I was asleep, in an armchair, long before it was served.