‘One penny entrance!’ he exclaimed. ‘Step inside and you will not regret it. Here you will see some of the wonders of the world from Negros to Esquimaux and more besides. Come, gentlemen! Dr Silkin’s House of Wonders. It will amaze you. It will astonish you. Never will you forget what you see here tonight.’
‘You are Dr Silkin?’ Holmes asked.
‘I have that honour, sir. Dr Asmodeus Silkin, late of India, late of the Congo. My travels have taken me all over the world and all that I have experienced you will find here for the sum of a single penny.’
A black dwarf in a pea jacket and military trousers stood next to him, beating out a rhythm on a drum and adding a loud roll every time the penny was mentioned. We paid over two coins and were duly ushered through.
The spectacle that awaited us took me by quite surprise. I suppose in the harsh light of the day it might have been revealed in all its tawdry shabbiness but the night, held at bay by a ring of burning braziers, had lent it a certain exoticism so that if you did not look too closely you really could believe that you had been transported to another world … perhaps one in a storybook.
We were in a cobbled yard, surrounded by buildings in such a state of disrepair that they were partly open to the elements with crumbling doorways and rickety staircases dangling precariously from the brickwork. Some of these entranceways had been hung with crimson curtains and signs advertising entertainments that a further payment of a halfpence or farthing would provide. The man with no neck. The world’s ugliest woman. The five-legged pig. Others were open, with waxworks and peep shows providing a glimpse of the sort of horrors that I knew all too well from my time with Holmes. Murder seemed to be the predominant theme. Maria Martin was there, as was Mary Ann Nichols, lying with her throat slit and her abdomen open just as she had been when she was discovered not far from here, two years before. I heard the crack of rifles. A shooting gallery had been set up inside one of the buildings, I could make out the gas flames jetting and the green bottles standing at the far end.
These attractions and others were contained in the outer perimeter, but there were also gypsy wagons parked in the courtyard itself, with platforms constructed between them for performances that would continue throughout the night. A pair of identical twins, orientals, were juggling a dozen balls, hurling them between them with such fluidity that they made it seem automatic. A black man in a loincloth held up a poker that had been made red-hot in a charcoal burner and licked it with his tongue. A woman in a cumbersome, feathered turban read palms. An elderly magician performed parlour tricks. And all around, a crowd, far larger than I would have expected – there must have been more than two hundred people there – laughed and applauded, wandering aimlessly from performance to performance while a barrel organ jangled ceaselessly around them. I noticed a woman of monstrous girth strolling before me and another so tiny that she could have been a child, but for her elderly appearance. Were they spectators or part of spectacle? It was hard to be sure.
‘So, what now?’ Holmes asked me.
‘I really have no idea,’ I replied.
‘Do you still believe this to be the House of Silk?’
‘It seems unlikely, I agree.’ I suddenly realised the import of what he had just said. ‘Are you telling me that you do not think it is?’
‘I knew from the outset that there was no possibility of it so being.’
For once, I could not hide my irritation ‘I have to say, Holmes, that there are times when you try my patience to the limit. If you knew from the start that this was not the House of Silk then perhaps you can tell me – why are we here?’
‘Because we are supposed to be. We were invited.’
‘The advertisement …?’
‘It was meant to be discovered, Watson. And you were meant to give it to me.’
I could only shake my head at these enigmatic answers and decided that, following his ordeal in Holloway prison, Holmes had returned entirely to his old self – secretive, over-confident and thoroughly annoying. And still I was determined to prove him wrong. Surely it could not be a coincidence, the name of Dr Silkin on the advertisements, the fact that one had been found concealed beneath Ross’s bed. If it was meant to be discovered, why place it there? I looked around me, searching for anything that might be worth my attention, but in the whirl of activity, with the flames of the torches flickering and dancing, it was almost impossible to settle on anything that might be relevant. The jugglers were throwing swords at each other now. There was another rifle shot and one of the bottles exploded, showering glass over the shelf. The magician reached into the air and produced a bouquet of silk flowers. The crowd, standing around him, applauded.
‘Well, we might as well …’ I began.
But then, at that very moment, I saw something and my breath caught in my throat. It could, of course, be a coincidence. It might mean nothing at all. Perhaps I was trying to read some significance into a tiny detail simply to justify our presence here. But it was the fortune-teller. She was sitting on a sort of raised platform in front of her caravan behind a table on which were spread out the tools of her trade: a deck of tarot cards, a crystal ball, a silver pyramid and a few sheets of paper with strange runes and diagrams. She had been gazing in my direction and, as I caught her eye, it seemed to me that she raised a hand in salutation, and there it was, tied around her wrist: a length of white, silk ribbon.
My immediate thought was to alert Sherlock Holmes but almost at once I decided against it. I felt I had been ridiculed enough for one evening. And so, without explanation, I left his side, wandering forward as if drawn by idle curiosity and then climbed the few steps to the platform. The gypsy woman surveyed me as if she had not just expected me to come but had foreseen it. She was a large, masculine woman with a heavy jaw and mournful, grey eyes.
‘I would like to have my fortune told,’ I said.
‘Sit down,’ she replied. She had a foreign accent and a manner of speech that was surly and unwelcoming. There was a footstool opposite her in the cramped space and I lowered myself onto it.
‘Can you see the future?’ I asked.
‘It will cost you a penny.’
I paid her the money and she took my hand, spreading it in her own so that the white ribbon was right before me. Then she stretched out a withered finger and began to trace the lines on my palm as if she could smooth them out with her touch. ‘A doctor?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And married. Happily. No children.’
‘You are quite correct on all three counts.’
‘You have recently known the pain of a separation.’ Was she referring to my wife’s sojourn in Camberwell or to the brief imprisonment of Holmes? And how could she possibly know of either? I am now, and was then, a sceptic. How could I fail to be? In my time with Holmes I found myself investigating a family curse, a giant rat and a vampire – and all three turned out to have perfectly rational explanations. I therefore waited for the gypsy to reveal to me the source of her trickery.
‘Have you come here alone?’ she asked.
‘No. I am with a friend.’
‘Then I have a message for you. You will have seen a shooting range contained in the building behind us.’
‘Yes.’
‘You will discover all the answers that you seek in the rooms above it. But tread carefully, doctor. The building is condemned and the floor is lousy. You have a long lifeline. You see it here? But it has weaknesses. These creases … They are like arrows being fired towards you and there are still many more to come. You should beware lest one of them should hit …’
‘Thank you.’ I took my hand back as if snatching it from the flames. As sure as I was that the woman was a fake, there was something about her performance that had unnerved me. Perhaps it was the night, the scarlet shadows writhing all about me, or it could have been the constant cacophony, the music and the crowds, that were overwhelming my senses. But I had a sudden instinct that this was an evil place and that we should never have come. I climbed back down to Holmes and told him what had just transpired.
‘So are we now to be guided by fortune-tellers?’ was his brusque response. ‘Well, Watson, there are no other obvious alternatives. We must see this through to the end.’
We made our way past a man with a monkey that had climbed onto his shoulder and another, naked to the waist, exposing a myriad of lurid tattoos which he animated by flexing his various muscles. The shooting gallery was before us, with a staircase twisting unevenly above. There was a volley of rifle shots. A group of apprentices were trying their luck at the bottles, but they had been drinking and their bullets disappeared harmlessly into the darkness. With Holmes leading the way, we climbed up, treading carefully, for the wooden steps gave every impression of being on the edge of collapse. Ahead of us, an irregular gap in the wall – it might once have been a door – loomed open, with only darkness beyond. I looked back and saw the gypsy woman sitting in her caravan, watching us with an evil eye. The white ribbon still dangled from her wrist. Before I reached the top I knew that I had been deceived, that we should not have come here.
We entered the upper floor which must once have been used for the storage of coffee for the smell of it was still apparent in the grimy air. But now it was empty. The walls were mouldering. The dust was thick on every surface. The floorboards creaked beneath our feet. The music from the barrel organ seemed distant now and cut off and the murmur of the crowd had disappeared altogether. There was still enough light reflecting from the torches which blazed all around the fair to illuminate the room but it was uneven, constantly moving in such a way as to cast distorted shadows all around us, and the further we went in, the darker it would become.
‘Watson …’ Holmes muttered, and the tone of his voice was enough to tell me what he desired. I produced my gun and found comfort in its weight, in the touch of cold metal against my palm.
‘Holmes,’ I said. ‘We are wasting our time. There is nothing here.’
‘And yet a child has been here before us,’ replied he.
I looked beyond him and saw, lying on the floor in the far corner, two toys that had been abandoned there. One was a spindle top, the other a lead soldier standing stiffly to attention with most of its paint worn away. There was something infinitely pathetic about them. Had they once belonged to Ross? Had this been a place of refuge for him before he was killed and these the only souvenirs of a childhood he had never really had? I found myself drawn towards them, walking away from the entrance, just as had been intended, for too late did I see the man step out from behind an alcove, nor could I avoid the cudgel that came sweeping through the air towards me. I was struck on the arm below the elbow and felt my fingers jerk open in a blaze of white pain. The gun cluttered the ground. I lunged for it, but was struck a second time, a blow that sent me sprawling. At the same time, a second voice came out of the darkness.
‘Don’t either of you move or I’ll shoot you where you stand.’
Holmes ignored the instruction. He was already at my side, helping me to my feet. ‘Watson, are you all right? I will never forgive myself if they have done you serious injury.’
‘No, no.’ I clasped my arm, searching for any break or fracture and knew at once that I had only been badly bruised. ‘I’m not hurt.’
‘Cowards!’
A man with thinning hair, an upturned nose and heavy, round shoulders stepped towards us, allowing the light from outside to fall across his face. I recognised Henderson, the tidewaiter (or so he claimed) who had sent Holmes into the trap at Creer’s opium den. He had told us that he was an addict, and that must have been one of the only true parts of his story, for he still had the bloodshot eyes and sickly pallor that I remembered. He was holding a revolver. At the same time, his accomplice picked up my own weapon and shuffled forward, keeping it trained on us. This second man I did not know. He was burly, toad-like, with close-cropped hair and swollen ears and lips, like those of a boxer after a bad fight. His cudgel was actually a heavy walking stick, which still dangled from his left hand.
‘Good evening, Henderson,’ Holmes remarked in a voice in which I could detect nothing more than equanimity. From the way he spoke, he could have been casually greeting an old acquaintance.
‘You are not surprised to see me, Mr Holmes?’
‘On the contrary, I had fully expected it.’
‘And you remember my friend, Bratby?’
Holmes nodded. He turned to me. ‘This was the man who held me down in the office at Creer’s Place, when the opiate was forced on me,’ he explained. ‘I had rather hoped he might be here too.’
Henderson hesitated, then laughed. Gone was any pretence of the weakness or inferiority that he had displayed when he had come to our lodgings. ‘I don’t believe you, Mr Holmes. I am afraid that you are all too easily gulled. You did not find what you were looking for at Creer’s. You haven’t found it here, either. It seems to me that you will go off like a firework … in any direction.’
‘And what are your intentions?’
‘I would have thought that would be obvious to you. We thought we’d dealt with you at Holloway Prison, and it would have been better for you, all in all, if you’d stayed there. So this time our methods are going to be a little more direct. I have been instructed to kill you, to shoot you like a dog.’
‘In that event, would you be so kind as to satisfy my curiosity on a just a couple of points? Was it you who killed the girl at Bluegate Fields?’
‘As a matter of fact it was. She was stupid enough to return to the public house where she worked and it was easy enough to pick her up.’
‘And her brother?’
‘Little Ross? Yes, that was us. It was a horrible thing to have to do, Mr Holmes, but he brought it upon himself. The boy stepped out of line and we had to make an example of him.’
‘Thank you very much. It is exactly as I thought.’
Henderson laughed a second time but never had I seen an expression more devoid of good humour. ‘Well, you’re a cool enough customer, aren’t you, Mr Holmes? And I suppose you’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you!’