While the guards rushed off, Dr. Maison knelt to check for pulse and breathing from Professor Moriarty.
“Mort.”
Then he shifted to Anna and checked her the same way.
“Morte.”
“She can’t be dead!” I said. “She can’t be!”
The doctor glared. “She is. And look at you. Your lung is a wet paper bag. I’ve stitched it together, but all of this—this lunacy—may have ripped it open again. These two are dead,
yes, young man, but unless you remain in bed, you could die, too!”
“Yes,” I said bleakly. “I could die, too.”
WHAT A desolation I felt, lying in my bed beside the bodies. They were covered now, of course. There were plenty of sheets in that empty ward.
I wasn’t sure if Dr. Maison had spread the sheets to preserve the dignity of the dead or to preserve the sanity of the living. He’d failed on both counts. There was no dignity in lying crumpled on the floor while fresh linens soaked up your blood. There was no sanity in sitting in a bed and breathing slowly while the woman you loved and the man you hated lay breathless not ten feet away.
I wept.
Tears are strange. Distilled grief. They bite like liquor and they get you drunk and they leave you hungover and headachy … and they help you survive what is unsurvivable.
She was gone. She was gone like a footprint under a tide. She was gone like a familiar name spoken in a crowd of strangers. She was gone like a butterfly in the gullet of a crow.
I told myself that I had known her for only two weeks, that my life had been happy before these two weeks and would be happy again. That’s what I told myself, but it did no good. It was as if that lead ball had ripped a hole in me.
The shadows of afternoon were lengthening when the police arrived—four officers, ranging from a black-haired rookie to a white-haired veteran. They entered the ward grimly, and when they laid eyes on the blood-soaked sheets draped over the bodies, their faces clenched with dread.
Dr. Maison entered the ward, and the gendarmes surrounded him and quietly badgered him with questions. I understood a few words here and there, but the French was too
quick and too quiet for me to catch most of it. Finally, Dr. Maison had had enough and excused himself. Then the officers turned to me.
“Savez-vous qui sont ces deux personnes?”
asked the silver-haired one.
“Do you know English?” I replied.
The youngest officer stepped forward: “Do you know the victims?”
I nodded and was on the verge of telling them all—of James and Anna, of the demon that had been within Moriarty and now dwelt in Sherlock Holmes—but the whole story seemed ludicrous … or outright dangerous. “I knew the girl. I loved her. She was Anna Moriarty, daughter of the crime lord James Moriarty, who died at Reichenbach Falls. As to the man—no, I did not know him. He was part of Moriarty’s gang, but I never knew him.”
The young gendarme turned to his fellows and translated. Their eyes slowly widened with shock and consternation. One of them wrote down every word on a small tablet. After trading comments with the others, the young gendarme said, “Did you witness the murders?”
I nodded numbly. “The thug, here, killed my Anna.”
“Killed her … ?”
“Yes, with a blunderbuss. A big pistol—there, on the ground, half beneath my bed. You’ll find the ball of the pistol in the ceiling.” I pointed up.
While the older three rolled their eyes to the ceiling, the youngest man stooped to drag the blunderbuss from the floor. He studied the device, checked to make sure the gun was not loaded, and sniffed the barrel. When he had been satisfied, the gendarme asked, “Why? Why would someone from Moriarty’s gang kill his own daughter?”
I shook my head. “Loose ends.”
The gendarme pointed to the bloody bandage on my heart. “And what happened to you?”
“Stabbed. By that man there, two days ago, at Gare Saint-Lazare.”
“It was the two of you, then. Lovers. But the henchman loved her, too.”
“Yes. I think he did.”
“And so, a confrontation,” the young officer elaborated, his eyes filling with romantic dreams. “He fought you at Gare Saint-Lazare, but the girl—Anna—saved you. And the henchman was driven mad with jealousy and came here to kill you, but she saved you again … at the cost of her own life!”
I nodded miserably. “I think you have the shape of it.”
“But who killed the henchman? You?”
“No. I’m in no shape for fighting. Another henchman, a man named Harold Silence, was battling this fellow here for control of Moriarty’s criminal empire. Silence killed this man.”
“And what did this—Harold Silence—look like?”
“Tall, thin—a hawklike nose, silvery eyes.”
“Where can we find this man?”
I released a long sigh. “I don’t know. Watch the papers. Watch for outlandish crimes, things that will draw the public eye. That’s what he wants.”
The young man retreated to the other gendarmes and told them what I had said. They nodded with the solemn silence of strangers staring into an open grave. The gendarmes stood there a while longer, murmuring decorously and glancing down at the linen-covered figures. At length, they started to shift, crouching, lifting sheets, studying faces, letting sheets fall back into place.
What were they looking at? Anna was dead. Her father, too. Three of the gendarmes drifted in a knot toward the
door, but the young one approached me and leaned down as if to speak to me. Instead, he drew the exorcism machine from the floor and lifted it.
“What’s this?”
Embarrassment lit my face from ear to ear, but I managed to say, “Therapy machine. Swiss therapy.” I reached for the device.
The gendarme set the machine on the side of my bed and smiled tightly.
“Thérapie suisse.
”
Those were the last words any of them spoke to me. The young gendarme tipped his hat and went to tell Dr. Maison that he could have the bodies removed. Then he joined his comrades at the door. They lingered there a moment more before passing through, leaving me with the dead Moriartys.
LE TEMPS
N
ight was falling beyond the ward windows when Dr. Maison returned with the orderlies. They carried Anna and James away and mopped up the blood and the pentacle. A splash of pine oil, a few more swipes, and nothing remained of the Moriartys. The hospital staff withdrew, leaving only me and a flickering gas lamp and that damned hole in the ceiling.
Sleep came slowly, and when it came, it was haunted …
by Anna …
by her father …
by Jack the Ripper …
by the exorcism machine … .
I DREAMED that the machine had its clamps on me. I dreamed that electricity pulsed into my head and hands and feet and reached toward my heart. It jolted my spirit free. Protoplasm seeped out of my mouth and nose and ears and eyes and every pore and coalesced in the air.
I hung above my body. The last of my spirit peeled away from my electrocuted flesh, and I rose.
A tunnel of light formed ahead of me, stretching up and away. I entered the tunnel.
“Anna!” I called. She was the light ahead of me. “Anna!”
I wanted to follow the cave of light toward her, but
something laid hold of my legs and drew me down. I sank through the floor of the tunnel, out of the brilliant, loving light and into the shadows.
The shadows cleaved to me. They held me as if I were their own. Possession.
I reeled. I pitched. I bucked until I threw the shadows off and galloped out of the darkness and back into my world, back into my flesh.
I JOLTED awake as the morning edition of
Le Temps
flopped down on my chest.
Above me stood Dr. Maison, scowling. “Here’s your handiwork.” The doctor pointed to the headline on the front page: “
Bataille des Associés du Seigneur de Crime Chez Les Invalides
.”
I sat up, struggling to read the article.
Dr. Maison snatched the paper away and translated:
The daughter of Professor James Moriarty, the London crime boss slain in Switzerland last week, died in a double murder at Les Invalides yesterday. An unidentified henchman of Moriarty killed the professor’s daughter, Anna, while she tended another member of the crime syndicate recuperating at Les Invalides. Afterward, the henchman was himself slain by another Moriarty underling, Harold Silence, in a bid for the throne of the London crime syndicate. Harold Silence apparently remains at large in Paris. One witness referred to Silence as “the Ripper of Paris.”
“You sensationalist!” Dr. Maison spat.
“I didn’t even speak to reporters!”
“But you spoke to the police. You misled them!”
“I told them the truth!”
“The truth? Just
look
at you—a young Romeo with a weeping wound over his heart and a dead Juliet by his side. They saw a romantic tragedy and gave it to the press.”
“I—I—I … How is this my fault?”
Dr. Maison sputtered. “Crime lords! Murderers! Reporters! You brought them here—you, who aren’t even a veteran!” He was on a rant, and there was no reasoning with him.
Instead I tried to distract him with the article: “What else does it say?”
“A few other things.”
“What other things?”
He sighed heavily and read:
According to Dr. Maison, chief surgeon of Les Invalides, the young witness was another criminal from the London gang. “Mr. Carnacki tried to kill this henchman before but was stabbed,” Maison testified. “He would have died from his wound if I had not saved him. I am an expert in bayonet-style wounds.”
“
You
spoke to the reporters?” I demanded.
“I am the chief surgeon.”
“You told them I was a criminal?”
“A misquotation. The reporters could not write as fast as I spoke, so they put words in my mouth.”
“You gave them my
name
?”
Dr. Maison folded the paper and dumped it in my lap. “You’d better get healthy and get out. I cannot shield you from the press any longer.”
Suddenly it struck me: I could use
Le Temps
to draw Silence in.
The demon within him desired one thing even more than blood: ink. He was planning to return to the public stage as
Sherlock Holmes, was no doubt already committing the crimes that he would later “solve.” Every morning, he would be reading
Le Temps
from masthead to obituaries, would be looking for depictions of his own crimes to see how he was portrayed. I would make sure he got some bad press. A few printed sentences every day could draw him in for a final confrontation.
“There’s no need to shield me from the press,” I called after Dr. Maison as he walked out. “Let them come.”
HE LET them come.
First to arrive was a young, nervous man from
Le Temps,
and then a middle-aged Brit—the Paris correspondent of the London
Times
—and then a succession of men from penny presses. Each reporter said he would feature me if I promised an exclusive. I granted one exclusive after another for the mere price of a subscription to each paper, delivered right to my bed.
Next morning, I awoke feeling markedly improved: a clearer lung, a sharper mind, and a pile of newspapers across my bed. I read all of them with interest. My tale, which had grown tall in the telling, had grown even taller in the writing.
Le Temps
reported it as follows:
THE “VETERAN” TAKES ON THE “RIPPER”
A day after the double murder at Les Invalides, the witness has thrown down a gauntlet for the killer. “Harold Silence is a thug,” said Thomas Carnacki. “Paris shouldn’t fear this man. He’s not a Ripper. He’s not even a Cutter. He’s more of a Scraper, a Filer—irritating but not really dangerous. He’s no Moriarty. He’s playing at crime. Moriarty was crime.”
Carnacki received treatment at Les Invalides by pretending to be a French veteran. He is in fact an English con man who
speaks only pidgin French. “Harold Silence wants to be a big man. He’ll stage a few crimes, badly planned, but sure to capture headlines. He’ll try to terrorize the city, but Paris shouldn’t fear a titmouse. Once I’m well, I’ll capture him myself.”
I smiled in satisfaction. The reporter had included all my best lines—all that Ripper, Cutter, Scraper, Filer nonsense, the bit about Moriarty being crime, the contention that Silence was a titmouse. That was rhetoric.
The account in the
Times
was less conscientiously written—but more powerful.
GENERALS FIGHT TO SUCCEED EMPEROR OF CRIME
James Moriarty, the Caesar of Crime, lies dead. Now the men who slew him are fighting for his throne. His Brutus, who struck the “most unkindest cut of all,” was a onetime underling named Harold Silence. Moriarty’s Cassius, the other “honorable man” who struck a blow, was a Cambridge-educated Russian named Thomas Carnacki. Both men now lay claim to Moriarty’s empire, and they are turning Paris into their battleground.
From his sickbed in the veteran’s hospital in Paris, Carnacki promised “murder and mayhem” once he was well enough to stand. Harold Silence meanwhile has begun what Carnacki considered a crime spree “bent on stealing headlines.”
Carnacki believes he is the rightful successor to Moriarty, who was brilliant and relentless. “Silence isn’t the right material. He’s a stupid post.”
I laughed aloud at those lines, even though I hadn’t actually spoken any of them. The middle-aged man from the
Times
was apparently a frustrated novelist, compelled to
turn facts into literature. Still, he’d done well. It was just this sort of grandstanding that would bring Silence out of the woodwork.
The best piece of sensationalism, though, came from the
Raconteur
, a penny-press paper that twisted my tale by putting it into Silence’s mouth:
RIPPER OF PARIS VOWS TERROR
The “Ripper of Paris” sent a postcard to the
RACONTEUR
about his current crime spree. The postcard appears below:
Dear Raconteur:
Paris belongs to me. I will take all the money, and the Metropolitan Police cannot stop me. They are too stupid The one man who could help you is lying near death’s door at Les Invalides. I will kick him across the threshold. Once he is gone, I will crown myself emperor of France. Bide my warning!
Ripper of Paris
An obvious fabrication: Silence would never admit that I could stop him. In fact, he would be affronted by the notion.
A postcard that sounded much more authentic appeared in another article in
Le Temps:
METROPOLITAN POLICE WAYLAID BY “BOMB”
The city police department was paralyzed this morning by a postcard signed “Ripper of Paris.”
Good morning, men!
Hit your beats. Keep the street urchins safe, but let your own brats die. A bomb! A bomb! Call off classes and get the kids out and look under the headmistress’s desk.
Ripper of Paris
This threat sent the detectives of the Metropolitan Police rushing to the school of Madame Bouvoir, where their children were enrolled. Officers cleared the building and found, beneath the headmistress’s desk, a wooden box crudely nailed to the floor. After hours of careful work, they removed the box to discover that the prankster had left not a bomb but a similar postcard, which said simply, “Next time … boom!”
This was no joke. Terrorizing children, waylaying law enforcement—Silence was showing Paris how powerful he was and how vulnerable it was. And while Paris focused on this great, empty crime, it nearly missed what Silence truly was up to:
FOILED BREAK-IN AT THE LOUVRE
The palace of the Louvre and its treasure trove of great artwork were the targets of a petty and cowardly criminal last night. In the early morning hours, a night watchman heard a crash and came running to discover a back door hanging ajar. Its wrought-iron knob and lock had been shattered by the blow of a blunt instrument. The guard called for comrades to sweep the museum, but the perpetrator had apparently been scared away. By dawn, the management had sent a locksmith to replace the ruined knob and lock.
This was no foiled break-in. No thief would destroy a wrought-iron lock when the building had a thousand windows. The perpetrator’s target could not have been artwork, but rather the lock itself.
Silence must have been the “locksmith” who appeared the next morning. He probably hadn’t even been summoned by “the management,” but had simply shown up, counting
on bureaucracy not to notice. He had then replaced the lock with one to which he held the key, giving himself an open door into the Louvre.
But what was he after? I could only guess that he planned an elaborate heist—to strike at the heart of Paris, steal her most precious artworks, sell them for a fortune on the black market, and then “solve” the crime by handing a patsy over to the police.
Next morning,
Le Temps
reported a story that confirmed it:
RIPPER THREATENS ARTWORKS
The Louvre received the most recent Ripper postcard last night. The card is reprinted with the hope that readers might identify the penmanship.
Dear Louvre—
I’m coming. Your art is mine. No masterpiece is safe. Watch me take Mona from under your eyes. You cannot stop me. No one can, especially not that pretender Thomas Carnacki.
Ripper of Paris
This message was undoubtedly from Silence. I recognized the handwriting, for one, but also, I recognized the demon’s opinion of me—disdain bordering on loathing. The postcard had prompted the Louvre to hire two more security guards—and I would have wagered that both of them were in the employ of Silence. He was stacking the deck with men on the inside and a door on the outside. No doubt he was making dozens of other adjustments so that he could walk out with the greatest works of Western art.
Then, of course, “Sherlock Holmes” would arrive on the scene and catch the thief.
My plan had failed. I had not drawn Silence in for a final
confrontation. The only way to stop him was to go to the Louvre. But how could I, weak as I was, alone as I was?
NEXT MORNING, a man appeared at the door, a man with a kindly, mustachioed face and broad shoulders and a long black doctor’s bag clutched in one hand. He approached my bedside and said, “Hello, Thomas. You may not remember me, but I helped save your life. I am Dr. John Watson.”
Stunned, I stared at him for perhaps ten seconds before I found my tongue. “An honor, sir.” I shook his hand.
Dr. Watson lowered himself into the chair where Anna had last sat. “I hope you’re doing well.”