The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 14 A DEEPLY DISTURBING DISCOVERY

Waterloo Station was just stirring from its foggy slumber as Conan Doyle stepped out of the station into the predawn murk. He had cabbed from the Albemarle to catch the first train back to his home in Surrey. At this early hour, the majority of daily commuters had yet to arrive, but carts rolled in and out of the echoing archways and the platforms bustled with the earliest risers in London: costermongers and barrow men scurrying to unload crates of vegetables and flowers bound for Covent Garden, sides of beef and sheep for Smithfield’s Market, fish and seafood for Billingsgate Market.

He was making for his favorite newspaper kiosk when his attention was deflected by a cheerful Cockney voice calling out: “Show your patriotism, sir, buy a ribbon from an old soldier.”

Standing in the shelter of a station arch was an elderly man in a battered pillbox hat and worn British army jacket. The uniform was in sad repair, the once-proud scarlet faded with the passing of years. One epaulet dangled loose. The gold brocade of the cuffs was frayed and threadbare in places, although the sleeves still bore the stripes of a sergeant. A Crimean War medal, tarnished and dull, hung crookedly on the jacket’s right breast. The man’s eyes were hidden behind opaque round spectacles. A white stick dangled from the crook of his arm. Hanging from a strap around his neck was a tray filled with trinkets: Union Jack bunting and ribbons. Up close, the skin of his face was shriveled and marked with a tracery of livid red lines.

Burns, Conan Doyle thought.

“How much, my good fellow?”

“Sam’s me name, sir. And a sixpence is all. And gawd bless ya for helpin’ an old soldier.”

The Scotsman rummaged his pockets, found a coin, and dropped it into the collection box.

“Half a crown?” the veteran guessed, catching the ka-chunk of a higher denomination. “Very generous. Very generous, indeed. Allow me, sir.”

The veteran plucked a ribbon from his tray and pinned it to the lapel of Conan Doyle’s woolen coat with surprising alacrity. “You usually come to London on the eight thirty train, don’t you, sir?”

The Scottish author’s mouth dropped open with surprise. Apparently, the veteran considered himself a bit of an amateur Sherlock Holmes.

“Yes, I do. How on earth did you know that?”

“I recognize you by your hair oil and cologne. Very top drawer. Very distinctive.”

“Remarkable,” Conan Doyle said, “but tell me, how do you find your way about on these foggy mornings?”

“I taps me way around London,” the veteran explained, demonstrating by tapping his white cane upon the ground. “Day or night, fog or no fog, makes no nevermind to me.”

“Clever… and remarkable. I shall have to use that in one of my detective fictions.” He dug out another coin and dropped it in the veteran’s collection box. “There you go, Sam. That’s well worth another half-crown.”

“Thank ya kindly, sir. Gawd bless ya, and Gawd bless the Queen.”

As Conan Doyle approached the newspaper kiosk, his eye was caught by the hysterical message scrawled upon the reader board: ASSASSINS STRIKE AGAIN! He hurriedly purchased a paper and snapped it open only to be flayed about the face by a giant screaming headline: “HOGG SLAUGHTERED!”

The Scottish author grimaced at the tasteless pun and scanned the subheading: “Bank of England president killed by anarchist bomber.” As he read the words, images of the previous evening swam up in his mind: the hoary figure they had witnessed shambling through the fog and the steam car and its stovepipe-hatted driver seen shortly before that. He stood pondering. If only he could visit the scene of the most recent assassination — a course of action fraught with danger after Commissioner Burke’s blunt threat. He momentarily considered his journalism contacts, but they would likely be fobbed off with an “official” description of events. He needed to somehow slip inside Hogg’s residence and see for himself what had transpired. He needed a type of disguise, a mask, and suddenly realized that he already knew an insider who could help them walk straight through the police guard as if invisible.

The door, which had been a stranger to paint for years, still bore the ghostly silhouette of where a knocker once hung. Conan Doyle was forced to remove his glove and knuckle the fibrous wood. Almost instantly, his knocking roused voices from inside. He caught the light tread of feet and the door was opened by a young woman with a babe balanced on her hip. The mother, barely out of her girlhood years, eyed him quickly up and down and snapped, “If it’s about the rent—”

“Ah, no,” he quickly put in. “I am an acquaintance of your husband’s. My name is Arthur Conan Doyle. I am the author of the Sherlock Ho—”

Abruptly, the woman slammed the door in his face with the force of a cannon blast.

The vehemence of the response rocked him back momentarily. He blinked away his surprise and turned to walk away, but then paused at the sound of raised voices: a man’s and a woman’s, arguing. In the background, the baby’s startled wailing. A moment later, the door snatched open again. This time it was answered by a cowed-looking young man. It took a moment to recognize Detective Blenkinsop so very out of uniform. He was wearing worn trousers gone baggy at the knees and a tea-stained under-vest. His thick dark hair was wildly mussed and it was clear his barber had not enjoyed a visit in days.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “A misunderstandin’. Come in, Doctor Doyle… please.”

Conan Doyle entered a modest room; it was clean, but furnished with a cheap assortment of mismatched furniture clearly on its third or fourth owners. Despite the chill outside, the space was humid and fugged with steam. Evidently, his visit coincided with washday — an iron cauldron bubbled on a hook in the small fireplace; baby nappies and a lady’s unmentionables dangled from a clothes rack winched tight to the ceiling. The young woman who had slammed the door in his face, evidently Blenkinsop’s wife, kept her back resolutely turned, bouncing the squalling baby in her arms as she glared out a window that offered only a view of a brick wall two feet opposite.

“My apologies,” Blenkinsop muttered in a low voice, “but the missus is a bit miffed—”

Overhearing his words, the young wife turned upon them, her pretty face ugly with rage. “Miffed? You nearly got him chucked off the force!”

“I’m just suspended,” Blenkinsop quickly countered.

“Suspended with no pay! No pay and us with a new babe!”

“Enough, Fanny,” Blenkinsop said. “It ain’t the gentleman’s fault—”

“I am sorry, I had no idea.” Conan Doyle reached into his pocket and drew out a clutch of banknotes, holding them out to Blenkinsop.

The detective looked at the notes hungrily, but shook his head. “I can’t take no charity—”

“This is not charity. I am here to interrupt your leisure. I wish to hire you.”

“Hire me? I don’t— What for?”

“I am still pursuing the Lord Howell case. Albeit…” He lowered his voice. “… in an unofficial capacity. I require the assistance of a professional detective. I could wish for no better than yourself.”

Blenkinsop and his wife exchanged a look freighted with meaning. Conan Doyle could almost see her visibly willing him to take the money. For the second time, the young detective eyeballed the banknotes.

“That’s too much,” he said.

“You do not yet know what I’m hiring you to do.”

“Nothing illegal, right? I’m just suspended from the force. I ain’t been booted yet.”

The hand holding the money did not waver. “I cannot share anything until you are officially in my employ.”

With a commingling of reluctance and relief, Blenkinsop took the banknotes, glanced at them, and then crossed the room and handed them to his wife saying, “Here ya go, girl. Mebbe you can pop to the shops and buy the babe some milk and a rusk, and something for our tea.”

The young woman snatched up a shawl and wrapped it about her and the babe in arms. “I’ll be off, then,” she said, and moments later the two men were alone in the room and able to speak freely.

“What’s going on, Doctor Doyle?”

“Nothing short of a coup d’état.”

“A coo—? You mean the Frenchies are about to invade?”

Conan Doyle chuckled. “Not exactly, but our nation is in crisis. The murder of Lord Howell is part of a plot of programmed assassinations aimed at key politicians and magnates of industry. But that is only the beginning. The plot will culminate in the assassination of the queen and the overthrow of the government.”

“Lumme! What can I do, Doctor Doyle?”

“I have needs of your sleuthing skills.”

A smile cracked Blenkinsop’s face for the first time. “You can count on me, sir. It’ll be good to be back in harness and out from underfoot with the wife and little-un.”

“There is one thing, Detective.”

“Tom. You’d best call me Tom. I’m suspended, remember?”

“Ah, yes. Very well then, Tom. I must stress, there will be danger involved. Possibly, great danger.”

Blenkinsop sniffed at the possibility. “No different from me regular day job then, is it? I’m your man, sir. Like you say in your Sherlock Holmes stories, the game’s afoot, eh?”

Conan Doyle clapped the detective on the shoulder and smiled. “Indeed, Tom, the game is very much afoot!”

When Conan Doyle and Detective Blenkinsop alighted from the cab, they found a cordon of blue uniformed constables surrounding Tarquin Hogg’s house. Three hearses and a black Mariah were already drawn up at the curbside.

“Blimey,” Blenkinsop said. “How do we get past that lot? Sneak in the back way?”

Conan Doyle thought a moment and said, “I say we sneak in the front way. You still have your detective’s badge, I take it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Bluff and bluster are often superior to stealth. You and I will march up there as though we are in charge. Flash them your badge. Just make sure they don’t have time to read it. Eh, Detective Sutcliffe?”

Blenkinsop frowned with puzzlement. “Sutcliffe? But me name is—” And then a smile broke across his face. “Ah, I tumble it. Very good… Doctor Watson. Shall we?”

The two men stepped onto the road and walked briskly up to the knot of police officers. But as they drew close, an officer in plainclothes noticed them and threw down the gauntlet.

“Who are you two, then?”

Judging by the man’s bushy brown moustache, martial bearing, and flat-footed stance that comes from years of pounding the beat, Conan Doyle guessed they had run into a plainclothes inspector. Blenkinsop flashed his badge, one finger held across it so no one could read the number.”

“Detective Sutcliffe.”

“Who? What you doing here, sonny Jim? This ain’t your manor—”

“Commissioner Burke sent me personally. Told me to get down here sharpish and fetch a doctor.” Blenkinsop indicated Conan Doyle with a nod. “Course, you got a problem with that, you could take it up with the commissioner when he arrives.”

Invoking the name of the police commissioner worked its magic. The inspector was suddenly all smiles. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound narky.” He extended a hand. “The name’s Barnes.”

“Good to meet you, Inspector Barnes.” The two men shook hands. “So, what’s happening?”

“Beggared if I know. We been here all night. No one’s allowed to go in until his nibs gets here. He don’t want nothing disturbed.”

“Yeah,” Blenkinsop quickly ad-libbed. “Commissioner Burke wanted the doctor to examine the victims’ bodies and have a report ready for him.”

Conan Doyle spoke for the first time. “So why three hearses?”

“Three stiffs. The murderer, the fat banker himself, and a butler copped it as well. Old army lad. Put five rounds in the murderer. Only the geezer had a bomb strapped to his chest. Butler found it with the fifth round, didn’t he? KA-BOOM!”

“Déjà vu?” Conan Doyle muttered to Detective Blenkinsop.

“Any witnesses still breathin’?” Blenkinsop asked.

“Maid. Name of Myrtle. Saw the murderer doing the dirty. A monster, she called him. Of course, you know women and their hysterics. But he was a big bastard as you’ll see from what’s left of him.”

“Right,” Blenkinsop said. “I’d better get the doctor in there before the commissioner arrives and thinks we’re all slackin’ off.”

They made a move to step past, but Inspector Barnes held them back with a gesture. “Wait, before you go in.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial rumble. “There’s something queer about this one. The victim looks like he went ten rounds with a circus gorilla. And you should see the state of the room…” The inspector shook his head. “… in bits.” He squinted up at the second story balcony. “So maybe what the maid said ain’t so daft after all.”

With that, Detective Blenkinsop and Conan Doyle passed unmolested through the gaggle of constables and entered the house. In the entrance hall, a solitary constable slouched against a wall, but jerked to attention as they entered.

“Oi! No one’s allowed in here—”

Blenkinsop flashed his badge. “Detective Sutcliffe. I brought the doctor with me.”

“Oh, right. Second floor. Can’t miss it.”

The two men ascended a grand staircase that spiraled upward in a swirl of polished mahogany balustrades. From behind they heard the constable guarding the door shout up to them: “Hope ya got a strong stomach.”

As they reached the first floor, a greasy haze hung suspended in the air and their mouths filmed with the acrid tang of scorched hair and burned flesh. They found the butler’s body sprawled close to the stairs on the second-floor landing. His eyes were open, shocked wide, as if surprised by his own death. His right hand still gripped a pistol. The blast had merely singed him, but a weeping hole in the middle of his forehead showed the cause of death. When Conan Doyle bent closer to look he found a brassy bolt protruding from the skull.

“Nasty,” Blenkinsop commented.

“Yes. No doubt a component from the bomb.”

They stepped carefully around the butler’s body. The blast had stripped the fine flock wallpaper from the wall and it hung in peeling curls. Farther up the hallway, the assassin’s corpse lay on its back: a hulking form with the mass of a toppled idol, heavy with inertia. Even in death it radiated menace and threatened to jerk to life at any moment. The yellow eyes were wide, the dreadful gaze scorching the ceiling.

“Charlie Higginbotham!” Detective Blenkinsop hissed from several feet away, his legs unwilling to carry him any closer.

Conan Doyle stepped close and dropped to a crouch over the body. The tattered remnants of the shirt were burned black and crispy. But most remarkable was the perfect rectangular opening in the middle of the chest, out of which a thin gray tendril of smoke still curled.

“You can see he had a bomb strapped to his chest,” Blenkinsop observed. “It’s blown a hole.”

Conan Doyle leaned closer, peering into the smoldering cavity. “No. This hole is far too neat and regular to be caused by an explosion. The chest has been cut open by someone with the skill of a surgeon using a bone saw.” He grunted with astonishment and looked up at the young detective. “The heart… it’s gone!”

Blenkinsop’s mouth dropped open. “What? How? How is that possible?”

Conan Doyle looked around the hallway and spotted a twisted metal box lying several feet away. Even from a distance, he judged that its dimensions exactly matched the rectangular hole in the assassin’s chest. He arose from the corpse and stepped over to pick it up. The oblong metal box was constructed of machined plates of shiny metal, held together around the edges by precise rows of brass bolts. One bolt was missing — likely the one that wound up in the butler’s forehead. An outward-puckered hole in the metal showed where a bullet had punctured the casing. Beside the bullet hole was what appeared to be a gauge, although the face was unreadable behind cracked and blackened glass. Something rattled loose when he shook it and fell out on the hall rug. He snatched it up. The heavy cogwheel had been formed from a solid chunk of metal, exquisitely machined so that it iridesced in the light. Conan Doyle wrapped it in a handkerchief and tucked in his pocket.

“This is not a bomb,” Conan Doyle announced.

“What, then?”

The Scotsman shook his head. “Some kind of infernal device.”

He turned it over and froze. A sick heat washed through him followed by a chill as sweat dried on the back of his neck. A tangle of rubber hoses dangled from the backside, and a trickle of blood now dribbled from one.

“Good heavens! It appears to be some kind of… mechanical heart!”

Before he could speculate further, a booming voice vaulted up the staircase ahead of its owner: “Come along, Dobbs. Don’t dawdle, man!”

The two companions shared a look of alarm. Blenkinsop ducked back down the hallway, darted a quick look down the stairs, and quickly jerked his head back.

“Commissioner Burke!” he hissed in a low whisper. “If he finds us…”

“Come!” Conan Doyle urged. He set the metal box down where he had discovered it. “There must be a servant’s staircase somewhere.”

The two hurried along the hallway as the tramp of climbing feet grew louder.

“So no one’s been in here?” Burke bellowed.

“No, sir.” The voice belonged to Barnes, the inspector they had bluffed their way past. “Just Detective Sutcliffe and the doctor you sent for.”

“Doctor? What doctor? And who the devil is Detective Sutcliffe?”

“But. He’s upstairs. I thought—”

“You imbecile!”

The thunder of police feet grew louder. Conan Doyle and Blenkinsop ran to the end of the hallway, which branched in two directions.

“If we go the wrong way, we’re buggered!” Blenkinsop said.

Conan Doyle noticed what appeared to be a bedroom door nearby. He snatched it open and the two men ducked inside and pulled it shut behind them.

The bedroom proved to be a linen closet. They stood in the darkness, straining to hear, breathing in the clean aroma of freshly ironed linen. Heavy feet tramped past, grew distant, but soon returned. Both men drew in a breath, and held it.

“Where are they?” Commissioner Burke’s voice thundered from the other side of the door. “Tell your man in the entrance hall not to let anyone leave.”

Thankfully, after a few minutes, the voices moved away and they were finally able to breathe out. From downstairs they caught the cannonade of the police chief’s voice bawling orders, in an obvious state of dyspepsia. Should they be caught, it seemed entirely likely that both would indeed be tossed into the deepest, darkest, dankest cell in Newgate.

Minutes passed. The voices faded from hearing. And then they heard the soft tread of approaching feet. Both men tensed as a floorboard on the other side of the closet door creaked. Suddenly, the door flung wide, spilling in light. The look of astonishment on the maid’s face betrayed her surprise at finding two men crouching in the darkness. It would have been comical in less dire circumstances.

“Thank you so much,” Conan Doyle said mildly as he and Detective Blenkinsop stepped past her. “We were quite lost in there.” He threw a glance up the hallway. The body of Charlie Higginbotham had been removed, but he could still hear the rumble of Commissioner Burke’s voice echoing in the entrance hall. He turned his attention to the astonished maid. “Where are your servant’s stairs?”

The woman numbly pointed.

“Thank you,” Conan Doyle said, and then asked, “Are you Myrtle?”

The maid nodded slowly.

“Excellent. Myrtle, I have a few questions for you.”

At Conan Doyle’s prodding, the young maid began a halting description of the events of the previous night. When she mentioned the steam car that visited earlier in the evening, Conan Doyle fought to keep his voice steady as he asked her, “And did you happen to see the driver of the steam car?”

The maid nodded. “Just a glimpse, sir — it was quite dark. He was a queerly dressed chap in a great black stovepipe hat. I took his card. It were a funny old name.” She suddenly remembered something and scrabbled in the pocket of her pinny, producing a calling card, which she handed to Conan Doyle.

He read the name on the card and gears meshed in his brain: “Ozymandius Arkwright!”

“That’s him!” the maid agreed. “Wot you just said.”

“Who?” Blenkinsop asked.

Conan Doyle threw a meaningful look at Blenkinsop. “Ozymandius Aurelius Arkwright, one of the nation’s best engineers. I’ve no doubt the steamer he rides around in is his own invention.” He was about to continue when the police commissioner’s head-splitting voice boomed up in the stairwell from below: “Dobbs! Blast you man. Get over here. Come with me upstairs.”

Both men flinched. They had to leave quickly. The Scottish author grasped the young maid’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Thank you so much, Myrtle. Do carry on. You’re holding up wonderfully during such trying times.”

They fled down the servant’s stairs and emerged from a tradesmen’s entrance on the side of the house. When they reached the police cordon, Blenkinsop nodded familiarly to the waiting constables and slapped one on the shoulder, saying, “Good job, lads. Stay sharp.”

And so they slipped unchallenged through the police line and sauntered back up the road to their waiting hansom. They were just climbing inside when four funeral attendants exited the front door of the residence bearing the coffin containing the body of the dead assassin. The two friends watched as it was loaded into the waiting hearse. And then something struck Conan Doyle as remarkably familiar.

“Tom, do you see that hearse the coffin is being loaded into?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything about it seem remarkable?”

“Remarkable?” Blenkinsop squinted a moment. “Nothing that strikes me. I seen a thousand like it in me day.”

“Precisely. Superstitious lot that we are, most people see a hearse and look away. One might remember a brewer’s dray cart, or a wagon delivering furniture. But to the casual observer one black hearse is very much the same as another: anonymous. As are the funeral grooms with their black frock coats and top hats draped with crepe — a uniform consciously designed to submerge an individual’s personality beneath the role they fulfill. Except there is something unique about the driver of that hearse.”

Blenkinsop looked again. The driver was just settling himself on the seat of hearse. Although he was dressed identically to the other funeral grooms, he stood out because of the port-wine stain running across one cheek and down his neck.

“I seen that bloke before!” Blenkinsop cried. “But where?”

“Lord Howell’s residence, the night of the assassination. I believe it was also the very same hearse.”

The young detective glanced at the Scottish author, brows hunched. “Coincidence?”

Conan Doyle’s moustaches drooped into a frown. “My friend Oscar Wilde believes in coincidences. Do you?”

The young detective shook his head. “Bein’ in my line of work… no. Never have. Never will.”

Commissioner Burke appeared with his spaniel-faced assistant Dobbs at his side, satchel slung over one shoulder. The commissioner shared words with the driver and then, to their surprise, Dobbs clambered up onto the hearse and took a seat beside the driver.

“What the devil is going on?” Conan Doyle breathed.

The hearse drew away from the curb and turned about in the road before heading away in the opposite direction.

Conan Doyle banged on the cab ceiling. The overhead hatch opened and the cabbie’s eyes appeared in the opening, “Yes, guv’nor?”

“Follow that hearse. And don’t let it slip away!”

The cabbie cracked his whip and the hansom lurched away in pursuit.

“Where we off to now?” Blenkinsop asked.

“Wherever Dobbs and that hearse go. And I’m dashed interested to find out where.”

Over the next few miles, the houses they passed grew poorer, shabbier, steadily declining from raunchy to ramshackle until they rock-bottomed at derelict. Suddenly, the cab clattered to a halt while the hearse they were pursuing continued on.

“What? Why have we stopped?” Conan Doyle shouted up.

A hatch in the roof flung open and the cabby’s white-stubbled face appeared. “We’re almost into St. Giles. I ain’t going in there no matter how much dosh yer offerin’. I can’t spend nuffink if I’m dead.”

“What do we do now?” Blenkinsop asked.

Conan Doyle pondered. He looked up the long street and noticed that the hearse had also drawn up and that Dobbs was preparing to climb down. The Scottish writer pulled a half-sovereign from his pocket. “Here,” he said, pressing it in Blenkinsop’s hand. “Take the cab and go home. I shall proceed on foot… alone.”

Blenkinsop was incredulous. “Alone? Into St. Giles? Are you bonkers? You won’t last five minutes! Especially dressed in them fine clothes.”

The young policeman had a point. Conan Doyle made a quick decision. He shrugged off his fine wool topcoat and hat and set them in Blenkinsop’s lap. “Deliver my coat and hat to the Athenaeum Club. I shouldn’t be too long.”

“I can’t let you go in there on your own. Not into one of the worse rookeries in London.”

“I’m sorry, Tom, but I believe I’ll be safer alone than in your company.” He smiled archly. “I may look a bit like a toff, but they’d sniff you out as a copper in a heartbeat. Besides, you work for me now, and that’s an order.”

Without waiting for an answer, Conan Doyle leapt down from the cab and hurried off in pursuit.

As the hansom clattered away, he spotted the adjutant a scant fifty feet ahead. Oblivious to the fact that he was being followed, the small man stood at the curb conferring with the funeral grooms atop the hearse and finally took his leave of them, striding off toward the huddle of squalid houses and frowsy shop fronts that marked the last traces of civilization before descending into the lawless hellhole of St. Giles, one of the most dangerous slums in London.

As Conan Doyle trailed from a discreet distance, Dobbs stopped and went into each of the shops in turn: a green grocer, a butcher, and a shop selling secondhand clothes. Each time, he exited after less than a minute. Puzzled, the author of Sherlock Holmes decided he needed to find out why. He wandered into the secondhand clothes shop where a large lout slouched in a chair rocked back against a motley pile of clothes, paring his nails with a rusty knife. The man glared suspiciously from under a pair of eyebrows the size of hedgehogs as Conan Doyle strode in and made a laughably poor attempt at pretending to be browsing the worn, holed, and ragged castoffs hanging from lengths of twine stretched across the shop.

“See anything to your fancy, sir?” the man asked spikily. “Only I doubt we got nothing your size in here.”

Conan Doyle dropped the pretense and spoke directly. “The gentleman who was just in here a moment ago. He is, ah, a friend of mine.”

“That right?”

“Yes. You see, I am a doctor and… I had wished to consult with him… on a matter of some… delicacy.”

“Oh yeah? What’s yer name, then?”

“Ah, Doctor… Watson. Doctor John Watson.”

“And what’s your business coming in my shop, sniffing about, Doctor Whatsits?”

The voice of a woman, well versed in woe, came from somewhere deep behind the piles of clothing. “Bobby,” the woman urged. “We don’t want no trouble—”

“Shut yer pie ’ole woman!” the lout bellowed.

“I concur with the lady,” Conan Doyle echoed. “I also am not looking for trouble.”

“Too bad, ’cause you found it.” The lout surged up from this chair, which clattered to the floor. He flourished the knife and advanced menacingly on Conan Doyle, who chose the better part of valor and hurriedly retreated from the shop into the street, feeling rather humiliated. Up the road he saw the diminutive figure of Dobbs, striding toward a row of tenements whose walls were propped up by giant wooden beams to stop them from collapse. Conan Doyle hurried on, desperate to keep him in sight. But as he passed the grocer’s store he noticed a woman just setting a printed flyer in the shop window:

So that was what Dobbs had stopped to deliver. Conan Doyle had seen an almost identical flyer the night he and Wilde were called to the murder scene of Lord Howell: the one Dobbs had produced as evidence of Vicente’s anarchist sympathies. Only this one featured a date and a call to attend a meeting.

Conan Doyle pressed on, hurrying to catch up with Dobbs, who by now was a tiny figure in the distance. The little man had been busy: 13/13 flyers were tacked onto every boarded-up window. The Scotsman passed an abandoned church, the roof holed and ruined. Nowadays the only churchgoers were gangs of idle boys who gathered on the street corner to fling stones at the few remaining panes of a stained glass. The name carved into the stone lintel above the missing church door read ST. WINIFRED’S. More of the 13/13 flyers had been wedged into crevices in the stone, and many lay scattered on the ground where the wind restlessly tossed them.

By this time, Dobbs had reached the tenements and strode into the midst of a large group of rough-looking men gathered on the street. As Conan Doyle watched, the police commissioner’s adjutant moved through the crowd, reaching into his satchel to pass out large handfuls of leaflets.

“What on earth are you up to?” Conan Doyle muttered to himself, watching from across the street. Suddenly, he tumbled to it as the men receiving the leaflets then began to distribute them amongst comrades just arriving upon the scene. Soon a huge mob milled on the street, and it was clear by the rumble of voices they were whipped up and spoiling for a fight. The mob turned and moved as one, marching down the street to a straggle of tenements where suddenly the crude weapons they had been concealing up a jacket sleeve and down a pants leg — iron pipes, cudgels, knives, broken bottles — began to appear, clutched in their hands.

Across an open swath of waste ground a hundred or more navvies were swinging picks, wheeling wheelbarrows, flinging shovelfuls of dirt as they laid the rails of a new stretch of railway. It soon became obvious what was going on: the tumbledown tenements lay in the path of the railway, and now a work gang — protected by a squad of hired brutes and a small force of constables conspicuously armed with truncheons and pistols — had come to tear it down. Conan Doyle realized he was watching two armies drawn up and about to collide. As the opposing gangs faced off, men cursed and spat at one another, but both sides seemed reluctant to strike the first blow. In the midst of railroad laborers stood a man in a fine frock coat and a gray top hat. He clutched a set of rolled-up drawings and shouted orders around a cigar clamped in his jaws. It was a figure Conan Doyle instantly recognized: Tristram Oldfield, railroad magnate.

And, more importantly, a member of the Fog Committee.

Despite the oaths, curses, and threats shouted back and forth, the work gang advanced slowly and steadily toward the first tenement. The building was in an advanced state of dereliction. The roof sagged like a broken-backed horse. The entire structure leaned at an alarming angle, a row of giant timbers propping up the low wall. The work gang edged forward, constables threatening with their truncheons, forcing the defenders to back away until they reached the shadow of the tenement and the navvies fell to work. Using long iron bars, they levered free first one of the giant props and then another. As they loosened the third, an ominous crack sounded, followed by the rumble of shattering masonry as the entire side of the building cleaved and sheared away. Men scattered and ran for their lives as masonry and bricks avalanched down, raising a cloud of soot and dust that engulfed both sides in a blinding cloud of grit. A chill breeze swept the cloud away, revealing that the entire side of the tenement had sloughed off. It was like tearing open a giant termite nest. To his horror, Conan Doyle saw women and children scurrying about the exposed rooms, screaming with terror. And more pathetically, many old and infirm people still lying in their beds, unable to flee.

Chaos erupted. The mob surged forward and clashed with the constables. Skulls collided with truncheons and blood flowed. Rocks and bottles and cobblestones pried up from the roadway whizzed low and lethal through the air. A single gunshot ripped the air and a man fell to the ground clutching his stomach. The fighting paused for a moment, but then a voice screamed “MURDER!” and the mêlée resumed with increased ferocity. Conan Doyle threw himself to the ground and sheltered behind a lamppost as the fusillade crashed down about him. The wind tumbled a square of paper through the air and plastered it against the iron pole he crouched behind. He peeled it loose. It was a simple square of deathly black paper printed with a contrasting design in stark white ink: