The Dragon Turn (22 page)

“Most certainly, your Highness. We believe in justice. Justice shall be served here … as surely as it is in a Dickens novel.”

The two men laugh.

A light comes on in Sherlock’s brain.
This Mr. Riyah DOES have a false name. Maybe two
. Bell’s favorite Dickens novel is
Our Mutual Friend
, the great author’s latest. He reads it constantly, often out loud and with, regrettably, great feeling, shouting and acting out the characters.
Of course! The name of the Jew in
Our Mutual Friend,
 … is Riah
. Sherlock recalls that his father had said something about this man’s other name — Abraham Hebrewitz — sounding like it came from a book.
I should have made the connection then! If Lestrade, that fool, read more than
The Illustrated Police News,
he would have known too! This man in the greatcoat, whoever he really is, plucked at least one of his identities from the pages of Dickens’ latest novel … and then hinted at it right in front of me! They are toying with us. They think this is a game, a piece of theater. Murder and cruelty is a game to them!

“So, being two fair and just gentlemen …” continues Hemsworth, “we shall turn ourselves in to you and the Metropolitan London Police!”

Sherlock’s mouth drops open. “You what?”

“Of course, my boy. Yes, I did the murderous deed, though I shall not tell you or anyone else exactly how.”

“I know how.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Be that as it may, let me say that I eliminated him in the cause of justice. I was wronged! And I received my justice! My vengeance!” His face turns
red. “But I have been fairly caught, and that is to be respected. I promised myself I would accept my punishment should I be truly found out.”

“Come with me, sir,” says Sherlock, “we shall cancel the show.”

“No.”

“No?”

“The show must go on. The show must always go on.” He holds an arm in the air and shouts. “The public must have it!”

“I don’t think that it —”

“It is my last request. I insist! In fact, if you do not allow this … I shall dispense with both you and Miss Doyle ahead of time.”

Sherlock and Irene look at each other. She squeezes his hand.

“But that shouldn’t be necessary. Miss Doyle shall sing! She must have her great moment! You will stay locked in here, Holmes, simply to ensure that you will not interfere. But I promise you, on my word and the word of Mr. Riyah …”

“Absolutely,” says the other man earnestly.

“That we will turn ourselves in to the police when the curtain falls.”

“And your creature?”

“What creature? Master Holmes, you are a fantasist, which is surprising, since I had heard you were so rational, so practical, and so scientific about everything.”

How does he know anything about me?

“There is no creature. Surely, the police saw that last time?”

“I know you are harboring something.”

“Of what sort? A dragon?” He and Riyah laugh out loud. Hemsworth stops suddenly and looks at Sherlock with a grin. “You are falling for my tricks!”

“I don’t know exactly what it is that you —”

“Well, if you don’t know, then you should not open your mouth! And besides, even if you were correct, is it a crime to keep a pet, however large or aggressive? I have transported many beasts from Africa, the Holy Land, and the Orient. I have sold them to respectable people here at home. That is not criminal activity. And it is not a crime to feed them, either.… There is no creature, anyway.” He gets to his feet. “Master Holmes, you may not find my word credible, considering what I did, but I say again: I promise you I will be available to the police when the show ends. I promise you! I did what I did for the right reasons, and I am willing to pay the price. I got everything I wanted.” The look on his face is earnest, and Sherlock, despite reservations, believes him.

But that doesn’t stop Holmes from wanting to be sure, from seeking a way out of his tiny prison. The second that Hemsworth, Irene, and Riyah leave the room, locking it behind them, the boy is up and examining the door and its latch. But try as he might, he can’t open it from the
inside. He employs his little wire and works on it for some time, but it seems to be constructed differently from a regular lock.

He sits down at the chair Irene had been using and looks into the mirror. He fixes his hair, straightens his collar, knocks the lint from his shoulders, then looks at himself in both profiles and tries to figure out which makes him most handsome, most manly. “My nose is too big,” he says, fascinated as he watches himself speak. He turns his head a little bit farther in profile, so the nose looks smaller. “That’s better.”

He sighs.
So, Hemsworth admits it
.

Sherlock has come to the end of another case, not one he wanted to be part of in the first place. Despite his high opinion of his own intelligence, what he has accomplished while just a lad still amazes him. He must truly have a talent for this. And perhaps he has been fortunate. But he may not be if he tries anything like this again, before he is better prepared.

He hears Irene’s voice. It begins to soar in the theater, the new opening for Hemsworth’s great show. He is taken aback by how beautifully she sings.
Yes, that is the career for her
. It is a song about magic, about dragons, and jealousy, and fame. He wants to see her sing it. It is ridiculous that he is cooped up in here. He goes back to the lock and tries it again but cannot spring it.

Sherlock sits down with a thud. Time passes and he hears the music end for the first act. He paces during the intermission and then sits at the dressing table once more as
the second act begins. He recalls that it is much shorter than the first.

Looking at the boy in the mirror, he can see his mother’s eyes. “I keep putting people, people I care about, into peril.” He thinks of Irene, who cannot be for him, of Beatrice who perhaps should be, of Scuttle, who was almost fed, alive, to a vicious animal. “This life I am choosing can’t have many friendships, any love.” But even now, Sherlock Holmes feels a deep-seated fascination for the very danger he is worrying about. He can’t hold it back. He thinks of the beast in the basement. “I believe everything Hemsworth told me,” he tells his image, “because it makes sense. But why is he lying about the creature? Or is he? How else could His Highness have killed the Wizard?”

He gets to his feet. The show will be done soon.
What if Hemsworth is lying about tonight too? What if he is planning to slip away? I must get out of here
.

He reminds himself that there are still many other things unsolved about this case — who is Mr. Riyah, for example, and where,
exactly
, is Mrs. Nottingham? Even if Hemsworth does turn himself in, will he reveal everything, or does he even know where his former wife is? Will Riyah vanish again, and will the “dragon” magically disappear too?

There is even something unsolved about this very room. He looks around. Riyah was in here, he is sure, both the first time he and Irene visited, and the time they came back.
Why was he hiding? What is his role in all of this? Did he have a reason to hate Nottingham too? Significant enough to help murder him?
Sherlock doesn’t care what Lestrade says, the “old Jew” was in
here. The police must have missed something when they searched the room. A Hemsworth trick was at work.

He surveys his surroundings. The curtain, behind which Sherlock thought Riyah hid, is gone, and a blank wall remains. He thinks of Bell saying that magicians don’t perform real magic. There is always a rational solution to their mysteries. The room is small, containing just the two dressing tables with mirrors, a settee for guests, and a clothing rack where various costumes are hung. Riyah could not have hidden behind the rack: none of the costumes touch the floor, so his feet would have shown beneath them. The boy examines the walls. He runs his hands along them from top to bottom and side to side, covering every inch. All four are solid.

Be rational, be practical
. If Hemsworth and Riyah could find a way through any of the surfaces in this room, which one would they choose? The walls?
Why? They simply lead to other rooms
. The ceiling?
Maybe, but it would just take you to the roof
. The floor?
Of course … the floor!
There is a rug on it, covering almost the entire surface, hiding any exit.
And what is beneath it? The basement … where the beast is held!
It’s perfect. Sherlock gets onto his knees and rolls the rug back, then examines the floor as carefully as he can, nose close to it, eyeing the edges of every board, wishing he had Bell’s spyglass. He is almost done when he finds two boards cut slightly shorter than all the others, near the wall, to the right as someone enters the room … 
to the right … that’s the same direction one must go to pass along the hallway to the staircase that leads down to the part of the basement that is under the stage
.

But it’s no use. The boards aren’t loose. The gap between them and the others is infinitesimal — he can barely get his fingernails between them. They won’t budge.

Sherlock stands up. He isn’t sure what to do now.
Will I have to wait here until the show is over? What if I am being played for a fool and all is lost?
He thinks of what His Highness said to him … “You
are falling for my tricks.”

He sits at Hemsworth’s dressing table this time.
Never give up
. He looks down at the table top.
What did Irene and I used to say?
“We need to eliminate the things that couldn’t possibly have happened, and work on the things that are most likely.”
So, the answer isn’t in the room’s surfaces. Where else could it be?
He examines the dressing table and realizes that the top opens. Inside, he sees tubes of stage makeup in piles. He shoves them back, seeking the bottom of the drawer. There is a book down there. He looks at the title … 
The Existence of Dragons!
He opens it.
Blank pages
. He flips through them, all the way to the end. The book is nailed down and after the last page, it is just a frame. Right there, in that frame, a small lever sticks up.
His Highness has such flair!
Sherlock glances under the desk and sees a column attached to it, connecting it to the floor. He looks at the lever again, and pulls on it. It won’t move. He pulls it harder. It snaps down and he hears a whirring sound behind him. He turns around.

The two short floorboards near the right wall are sliding back!

In a flash, he is stepping beneath them. His feet come to rest on a false floor in a narrow tunnel, about a yard high and wide. He has to go down on his hands and knees to get
his head beneath the floor but when he does, he sees that the passage leads to the right, at a slight angle … in the direction of the basement room.

He crawls forward and soon wonders exactly where he is: perhaps moving below the other dressing rooms now. It isn’t far from Hemsworth’s location to the basement door at the end of the hallway, maybe forty or fifty feet. After he has crawled about half that distance, he hears something. It is coming from above. He rolls onto his back and looks up. He can see through a half-inch crack in the floorboards, directly into another room. He squints. Someone is in there, getting dressed. When he focuses, he can tell it is Venus … her entire body from the waist up is clearly visible in the crack … and she isn’t getting dressed … 
she’s undressing
. He gawks at her. She is wearing her skimpy, nearly see-through muslin costume, much of her body exposed. He notices her out-of-doors evening clothes lying on a table next to her. She is indeed a magnetic woman, even more so than usual at this moment, while slipping off her clothes. Sherlock can’t take his eyes from her. He knows he shouldn’t be looking. But he is fighting his fifteen … nearly sixteen-year-old chemistry. She has no way of knowing he is here.
I can watch. No one would know. She won’t know
. She is peeling off the muslin, her beautiful dark skin showing on her lithe arms and slim neck … a vision. Sherlock sees the top of the white underclothing that covers her chest. She is about to take that off too.… He clenches his teeth, summons his strength, and finds his sense of right and wrong.
No one would know … except me
. He turns his eyes away, rolls over, and moves on.

In another twenty feet, the passage comes to a dead end. But when he presses on the little, cut out section of wall in front of him, it pushes open. He is at the landing on the staircase, above the basement at the end of the hallway.

Once again, he hears something hissing and thrashing below … something large.

SHOWSTOPPER