The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Dr Jekyll & Mr Holmes (8 page)

I did so and was about to leave when the detective told me to hold out my hands and, when I obeyed, dumped a double handful of pennies and half-pennies into them.

‘What are these for?’ I asked.

Amusement sparkled in his single exposed eye. ‘To toss at the girls, Watson. To toss at the girls.’

That bore explaining, but as he was already at the door, I decided to abandon it for now, dumped the coins into my trouser pockets, and followed him.

T
HE
H
AUNTS
O
F
H
YDE

I
dare say that we gave Mrs. Hudson something of a turn on our way out, but as she was a most long-suffering woman she accepted Holmes’s sketchy explanation for our appearance without protest, and we were allowed to leave through the side door. Transportation was our next difficulty; three times Holmes attempted to hail a cab, and three times he was nearly run down for his efforts as the drivers, exhibiting keen senses of personal danger, whipped up their horses to prevent us from boarding. On the fourth try he found one who was not so particular, and though Holmes had to show him gold in advance, he agreed to convey us to our destination.

Soho was respectable in comparison to the appalling conditions along Buck’s Row, where brothels and slaughterhouses were crowded together along filthy streets so narrow that there was hardly room for two carriages to pass without scraping their wheels, and every doorway was occupied by either inebriates or, to use Utterson’s quaint phrase, ‘women of dubious occupation’. Gas lamps were few and far between, as indeed were policemen; for these reasons, it was no wonder that, onceour driver had let us off at the address which Holmes had given him and been paid, he produced his whip and slapped his horse into a brisk trot to quit the area as rapidly as possible.

The building before which we found ourselves was a half-century old at least, its soot-darkened façade beginning to crumble and the windows in the upper storeys long since boarded up. Over the entrance, appended by chains to a trusted wrought-iron post, swung a wooden sign upon which the legend THE RED GOOSE could just be made out in letters of faded scarlet. From inside floated the tinkling strains of an out-of-tune piano, punctuated at intervals by peals of drunken laughter.

‘We’re late, Watson,’ Holmes murmured. ‘The curtain has gone up.’

The performance had indeed started. A line of scantily-clad women were cavorting about upon the creaking boards of the stage, whilst the audience, a predominantly male assemblage made up of day-labourers, harbour rats, and an occasional top-hatted, decadent toff, cheered, stomped their feet, and whistled to the accompaniment of manic piano music. As we stood inside the door, searching the multitude of faces for that of our quarry, I was surprised and embarrassed to recognise a number of my own colleagues among the last group, proving that still waters ran deeper than even I had suspected in this enlightened age.

The detective uttered a small exclamation of disappointment.

‘No sign of Hyde,’ said he. ‘Perhaps we have put him upon his — Halloa, there he is now.’

As he spoke, the man himself brushed past us on his way down the aisle, cane in hand, cloak billowing out behind him. After a few steps he stopped and swept the room, as he had the night before in Stürmer’s, with a defiant gaze. This time, however, there was no anger, but rather arrogance, as if he considered himself master of all that he surveyed. I fought the urge to avert my face as his glance swung in our direction, lingered an instant, then moved on. Our disguises, it seemed, had stood up to the supreme test. Even so, I was racked once again with a savage, unreasoning hatred for this man and all that he stood for. That I should be so weak filled me with self-disgust, but a surreptitious glance at my companion confirmed that I was not alone in this feeling. Behind the masterpiece of make-up, behind even his own emotionless mask, I, who knew him so well, noted the signs of revulsion. Perhaps it was no more than a hardening of the glint in his one visible eye, or a slight tightening of his thin lips; certainly it was no more. But the signs were there nonetheless, and I alone could read them. Hyde struck the same primitive chord in everyone he encountered.

The new-comer removed his top hat and cloak and, there being no-one to receive them, carried them with him to a seat in the third row. Hatless, his head, a mass of shaggy black hair, swept backwards from his bulging brow in a simian crest, completing his resemblance to a creature from the primeval forest. I noted also that he walked with his toes turned inwards slightly, as Holmes had deduced before ever the two had laid eyes upon each other; could that, I wondered, be the reason for the impression which I received of some nameless deformity in Hyde’s appearance? But it was a question left unanswered as he took his seat and dropped out of sight amidst the much taller patrons who surrounded him.

‘We had best find seats,’ whispered Holmes.

We proceeded down the aisle to the fourth row, where, as fortune would have it, we found two vacant seats almost directly behind Hyde, and squeezed in between a ragged pedlar and a muscular fishmonger who reeked of his profession. There we sat back to enjoy the performance as best we could.

I will not embarrass the reader with the details of that production, other than to deplore the things which a certain class of women will do in order to hear the sound of coins clinking about their feet. Lest we appear conspicuous by our abstention, at Holmes’s insistence I joined him in tossing pennies and half-pennies up onto the stage and whistling in a manner most unbecoming our station. I thanked heaven for my friend’s proficiency in the art of disguise, for if any of my West End acquaintances had recognised me during those moments I should certainly have been forced to retire from society altogether.

In front of us, Hyde watched the show for some little time in stony silence. Then, rising, he dipped into his pockets and flung a silvery cascade of shillings and half-pence scattering over the stage. The more substantial noise made by these denominations as they struck and clattered about the boards was not lost upon the dancers, who squealed and dropped to their knees to scoop up the unexpected bounty, oblivious to the protests of those patrons who wished the entertainment to continue. Hyde’s laughter as he watched them chasing the coins was nasty. Around us, the complaints of the ruffians took an ominous turn as the source of their disappointment became known. Faces black with fury turned upon the dwarfish creature in the third row.

‘Trouble brewing, Watson,’ my comrade informed me. ‘You would be wise to keep your revolver at hand.’

I nodded my understanding and, slipping my hand into the right pocket of my pea-jacket, closed it over the butt of that instrument which had seen us through many a harrowing episode unscathed.

‘There ‘e is,’im what stopped the show!’ bawled a Cockney sailor in the far corner, pointing at Hyde.

The latter met his gaze with a wolfish sneer.

‘Get him!’ roared a drunken voice behind us.

A square-featured ruffian who had been seated beside Hyde sprang to his feet and sent a fist the size of a ham swinging at his neighbour’s head. Hyde ducked and, whilst his assailant was off-balance, brought the heavy crook of his cane down upon the latter’s skull with a resounding crack. The fellow dropped like a lead weight.

After that the room erupted. Blackguards of every description hurdled seats and fought their way through the heaving throng to get to Hyde. This sparked fresh battles, and the air swelled with the swoop of canes and sticks and the solid sound of fists striking unprotected flesh whilst curses flew like chaff before the wind. The fish-monger beside whom I had been seated swung at me, but I sidestepped the swing and with the flat of my hand pushed him back into the tangle of brawling forms, after which I saw no more of him. Meanwhile, a wiry longshoreman in the row of seats behind us lunged forward to snatch at Holmes’s collar, missed, and howled when his intended victim brought the edge of a stiffened hand slicing downwards like a meat-cleaver against the bones of his wrist. The detective followed this up with a well-aimed right cross to his would-be attacker’s jaw. Upon impact the fellow went rigid and catapulted backwards, landing in a tangled heap amongst the kindling of his chair. He did not get up.

Hyde had disappeared during the confusion. Whilst I was looking for him, a hand closed like a steel vice over my left arm, the one which had been wounded in Afghanistan. I spun about, right fist poised to strike, only to check myself at the last instant when I recognised Holmes’s Lascar face.

‘He ducked out during your altercation with the fish-monger,’ said he. ‘I suggest that we do the same.’

We battled our way down the aisle and into the street, where Holmes stopped and snapped his head to right and left.

‘There!’ He pointed out a hansom which had just clattered off down the street. The illumination from the corner gas lamp gleamed momentarily upon a silk hat inside the conveyance.

A four-wheeler was passing. This time Holmes took no chances but hailed it with a coin glittering in his upraised right hand. It stopped.

‘There’s a half-sovereign in it for you if you can keep that hansom within sight,’ he told the driver, and climbed in. I got in beside him. We began rolling just as the first police whistles sounded behind us.

‘He’s a clever one, this Mr. Hyde.’ Holmes sat with his hands upon his bony knees, clenching and unclenching them in his excitement. His eye held a steely glint in the light of a passing gas lamp.

‘I don’t see how you can say that,’ I remarked. ‘The man came near to being torn to pieces by that mob.’

‘The riot was a blind, Watson, staged to mask his flight. He knew that he was being watched.’

‘But our disguises —’

‘He saw through them. I am the one to blame; had I not underestimated him, I would have had the foresight to cover our ears.’

‘Our ears!’

‘Yes, Watson, our ears. Of all the human physical characteristics, the configuration of the ear is unique. No two pairs are exactly alike. As long as they remain unconcealed, there is no disguise which cannot be penetrated by a trained observer. I had thought that I was the only man in this part of the world who had the ability to memorise such things, but I can see that I was wrong. That is it; that has to be it. No other explanation will suffice.’

‘It seems fanciful.’

‘Yes, that is the common fool’s reaction to something which he does not understand.’

This vitriolic response struck me like a blow in the face. I fell silent.

After we had clattered onwards another fifty yards or so, Holmes laid a warm hand upon my arm. ‘My dear fellow, once again I beg your forgiveness,’ he said gently. ‘You are right about my needing a holiday. When this is over, the Queen herself will not be able to keep me in London.’

‘No apologies are necessary, Holmes.’

‘Good old Watson!’ He patted my arm.

If Hyde suspected that we were still on his scent, he gave no indication. The cab in which he was riding neither increased nor diminished speed, but kept its measured pace; it was as if he were making it easy for us to trail him, as if he had abandoned entirely his plans of losing us and had chosen instead to parade the details of his life before our eyes.

And what a sordid life it was! We followed the creature through opium dens and brothels, along malodorous piers and up narrow alleys, down fiendish labyrinths of which Dante himself had never dreamt. There was no vice which Hyde did not know, no spectacle so mean that he did not delight in it. The blackest corners of London were not dark enough to conceal his forbidden pursuits, though they were amply devoid of light to turn away the most determined of adventurers. Wherever he went, however, and no matter how low the individuals with whom he consorted in order to acquire his revolting pleasures, their reaction to him was universal; his money was welcome but he most emphatically was not. Like Holmes and myself, they recognised in him that common denominator of evil which rendered him an outsider in whatever circle he tried to enter.

Once, whilst hastening along the pavement towards one of his dark dens, our quarry was accosted by a one-legged beggar attired in the remnants of a regimental uniform, who balanced his weight upon one of his crutches as he held out a tin cup in which a number of coins rattled. Without pausing or even slowing his stumping pace, Hyde slashed at the wretch with his stout cane, fetching him a glancing blow upon his right shoulder. The cripple staggered and would have fallen had not the brick wall of the nearby building intervened; as it was, he stumbled against it and was forced to snatch at the single crutch that had been supporting him to prevent it from sliding away. His assailant continued on his way without so much as a backward glance. I had all I could do to keep from rushing forward and collaring the scoundrel, and might have done so but for Holmes, who, following along with me at a discreet distance, laid a precautionary hand upon my arm. I contented myself, as did he, with making a substantial contribution to the shaken beggar’s cup as we passed by a moment later.