Sherlock Holmes In New York Part 13

The robed man, his beard flying, raced into the traffic, waving his sign frantically, and calling, "Cab! Cab!"

Some twenty minutes later, the young man's cab deposited him at the same dank waterfront area that the theater doorman had visited two days earlier. He slipped into the alleyway, and thus missed seeing a second cab disgorge the old religious fanatic who had briefly shared the pavement opposite the Haymarket Hotel with him.

The bewhiskered man, still carrying his sign, looked about him with interest. "Of course," he murmured. "Moriarty's attraction to rat-infested buildings at the water's edge. Some vestige of his ancestry, perhaps."

A few minutes later, the sound of a creaking door alerted him, and he stepped back into a shadowed doorway. As the young man emerged from the alley once more, he was suddenly confronted by the bearded man, whose ascetic appearance was marred by the very businesslike revolver he had produced from his robes and had trained on the young man's head.

"Charles Nickers, I presume," said the prophet. "My name is Sherlock Holmes. I dare say you've heard of me."

"Cor blimey!" was all that Nickers could say.

"Yes, I often wonder why He hasn't chosen to do just that on many an occasion . . . Now then, my man, unless you wish to go the way of your brother, Bill, tell me who is in that building!"

"The . . . the Professor . . ."

"And how many others? Speak up smartly, or you'll swing for it!"

Holmes did not see an upstairs window in the moldering building slide partly open, or a pallid face crowned with wispy white hair stare out at the scene below, and then become distorted with rage. Professor Moriarty watched his bizarrely clad enemy march his underling off to the next street in search of a policeman, and, quivering with fury, sank back into the chair behind his desk. A p.a.w.n had been taken, and soon most of his pieces might be swept from the board-but Sherlock Holmes was a long way from placing James Moriarty in check!

A block away, Holmes was handing over his prisoner to an astonished New York policeman, "Here's my card, constable. Take this man in charge and get word at once to Inspector Lafferty that the building at the far end of this alley is to be surrounded and its occupants arrested. Tell him that I'll provide him with full details directly."

The policeman had trouble enough taking in this unusual message, but the name on the card, contrasted with the outlandish figure before him, was even harder to credit.

He looked from the pasteboard to the prophet, and said, faintly, "You are?"

A quarter of an hour after this encounter, Sherlock Holmes, still robed, sandaled and bearded and carrying his sign, descended from a cab in front of number 4, Gramercy Park West, and made for the steps leading to the house. Hesitating, he crossed the street, and strode up to the still-present watcher in the checked suit, who eyed him curiously, then ducked as the sign was thrust in front of his eyes.

"I strongly suggest you take these words to heart, my man!" said Holmes in an eerie, quavering voice.

He then re-crossed the street and entered the house, leaving Moriarty's spy wondering what sort of crazy crew was gathering at the Adler woman's lodgings.

Inside, Sherlock Holmes quickly penned a note outlining his discoveries and emphasizing the need for immediate action on Moriarty and his henchmen, sealed it, and pa.s.sed it to the waiting butler.

"There you are, h.e.l.ler. To Inspector Lafferty as quickly as possible!"

"Yes, sir." As the man hurried out with the note, Holmes began to remove his beard and wig. To Irene Adler, standing close to him with young Scott, he said, "Within the half-hour, Moriarty and his entire American organization will be in custody. Irene, your fears are at an end."

He looked down at Scott and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Well, well, young man, you've had more than an adventure-much more! You've aided in the capture of the world's most notorious criminal, and you've been instrumental in preventing a devastating world war."

"Well, I wish I'd known all that, sir," said the boy. "I wouldn't have slept through so much of it!"

"Well said!" Holmes turned to Irene Adler. "Bright lad. Well, I must be off now. Good-bye, Scott."

"Good-bye, Mr. Holmes."

"Must you go?" said Irene Adler.

Holmes, nearly through the archway, indicated his costume. "Yes. These must go back to the costumer, and I'm anxious to learn of Inspector Lafferty's success."

Irene Adler nodded, and followed him through the arch, walking beside him down the stairs. Halfway in the descent, he paused and looked thoughtfully at her.

"You've not changed, really," said he, "since that week in Montenegro . . . when was it, 'ninety-one?"

"Not changed in ten years? Sherlock, how gallant of you. But come, now-ten years?"

"I notice nothing."

There was an undertone of laughter in her voice. "What? Sherlock Holmes notices nothing?"

"Why, am I so different, then?"

"No. Far from it. That was my first thought when you burst in here: My heavens, it's as though it were yesterday!"

"Well, then?" He studied the woman for a moment, seemed about to continue down the stairs, and then glanced back toward the drawing-room and the now unseen Scott. "I hadn't known . . . after that first misadventure from which I managed to extricate you . . . that you'd married again."

She held his gaze steadily.

"I have never remarried, Sherlock."

"I see . . . You were appearing in-Rigoletto, wasn't it?"

Irene Adler nodded. "And you were on a walking tour."

"Yes, I remember thinking to myself, what an unlikely place to come across you: Montenegro. You were always so attracted to . . . the bright lights of the Metropolis."

"I remember thinking the same of you. What an unlikely place to come upon someone who was never at home outside of London."

Sherlock Holmes said, very softly, "Never . . . until then, perhaps."

Their gazes locked silently for another moment. Then Holmes reached inside his robes, fetched out his watch, and checked the time.

"Almost eight," said he. "If things have gone well, and they cannot fail to have done, I'll get word to you. Perhaps the two of us could-the three of us could-take supper together." He looked at her with the hint of a grin. "And I don't mean Watson."

Irene Adler held out her hand as she spoke. "I'll wait for your message."

Holmes took her fingers very gently, his face grave, as if studying and memorizing the faint, enigmatic smile she now gave him.

It was all very well for Holmes to make a point of returning his prophet's regalia to the costumers-and I suppose it wouldn't have done for him to have gone about the streets all night in it-but the result of that errand was a truly infuriating delay while the Inspector and I waited for him outside the Hotel Algonquin, a wait made even less pleasant by the doorman's evident mortification at the sight of Lafferty's police buggy parked at the curb.

When Holmes did finally appear, past nine, and looking a great deal jauntier than I recalled seeing him for some time, I am afraid that I was less than friendly in my greeting. "Holmes! Where have you been? We've been waiting G.o.d knows how long!"

"What is it?" he replied, clearly startled by my vehemence. He glanced with concern at Lafferty. "Didn't you get my message, Inspector?"

"I did, Mr. Holmes, and the Nickers fellow revealed the name of McGraw's man who's been cooperating with Moriarty. He's been arrested, the warehouse has been seized, and fifteen of Moriarty's henchmen are in jail right now."

"But not Moriarty!" I cried.

"What! Is that true?"

"I'm afraid so," said the Inspector. "He abandoned his men and slipped through our net."

Holmes' face went stiff with sudden fear. "We must get to Irene's house on the instant! Scott Adler is in the most extreme peril!"

Lafferty did not question his judgment, but pointed to the buggy and cried out, "The wagon! Quick!"

The three of us jumped aboard, and in a moment were clattering down the street. It was but a few moments-peril-filled ones, they seemed to me, as we dashed through the evening traffic and careered around corners so quickly that the buggy at times canted over on two wheels-until we drew up at Irene Adler's house and Holmes dashed up the steps, ringing the bell and calling for her and Scott.

"But-they're not here, Mr. Holmes," answered the perplexed h.e.l.ler, looking past him at the Inspector and myself, and the buggy with its lathered horse panting in the traces.

"Not here? Where did they go?"

Holmes made his way into the foyer, and Lafferty and I followed.

"Why-to meet you, sir. You sent them this telegram." The butler picked up a buff-colored sheet of paper from the foyer table.

"Give me that!" cried Holmes, and hastily read it. "'Meet me at the fountain in Stuyvesant Square within the hour. Sherlock.'" He crumpled the telegram in his fist. "I've sent them directly into his hands! h.e.l.ler-how long ago did they leave?"

"Within the half-hour, sir."

Sherlock Holmes turned to us, his eyes ablaze. "Quick, The game's afoot, and we've not a moment to lose!"

Chapter Fourteen.

Holmes, Lafferty, and I scurried down the steps to the buggy and leaped aboard it.

The Inspector yelled to the driver, "Stuyvesant Square! Emergency!"

We were bounced about on the seat as the wagon got off to a racing start. Far faster than before, we scorched through the streets, very nearly overturning at some corners, it seemed to me, and more than once sc.r.a.ping a lamppost.

In a few moments, Lafferty glanced out the window and said, "This is it! Now, where-?"

I looked out into the park-like square, and saw, near its central fountain, the figure of a lone woman. "There! That's Miss Adler. But where's the boy?"

At the Inspector's direction, the driver sent the police wagon driving straight along the footpath to where Irene Adler stood. Holmes fairly tumbled out of it and ran over to her.

"Sherlock! Sherlock, they have him! They have him again! Just now!"

I caught a glimpse of a closed carriage at the moment leaving the square, the lamplight revealing a familiar checked pattern on the driver's coat, and pointed at it. "Holmes! There, just turning the corner! The chap driving that cab!"

"Yes!" cried Irene Adler. "They're the ones!"

"Moriarty!" said Holmes. "Inspector! That cab! We must overtake it! Irene, Watson, come!"

He and I pulled her along and into the buggy, while Lafferty called out to his driver, "That cab heading south! Catch up with it!"

Once again the police vehicle seemed to fly along the streets; but this time there was a quarry in sight, a quarry which, though we could not gain on it, did not seem able to draw away from us.

In a few broken sentences, Irene Adler told us how she had taken the telegram as a genuine one, thinking that Holmes, to celebrate Moriarty's downfall, meant to meet them at the indicated spot to take them to the late supper he had spoken of. She and her son had, indeed, thought that the carriage which approached them held Holmes himself, until the boy had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her and thrust into the cab by the man in the bright suit, and she herself immobilized by a pistol clapped to her head.

"Thank G.o.d you came when you did!" she gasped. "Even seconds later, and they would have been out of sight and gone forever!"

"Seconds earlier, and we should have forestalled them!" said Holmes savagely. "Don't worry, Irene-we'll get your lad out of this!"

I hoped his voice did not ring as hollowly to her as it did to me.

Then, as the chase progressed, Holmes suddenly glanced sharply out the window. "Inspector, isn't this-?" he began.

"By heaven, it is," said Lafferty. "We're heading straight for the scoundrel's headquarters!"

The carriage containing Scott Adler and the white-faced man who menaced him with a pistol, and driven by the man in the checked suit, jolted to a halt at the derelict warehouse.

"They're hot on our heels, Professor!" the driver called.

"Step lively, boy!" Moriarty ordered Scott. "Through that door and up the stairs! March!"

The driver pulled the door closed behind them. In the Professor's study, Moriarty snapped orders to his remaining henchman. "You know what to do! Ready the launch!"

He grasped a long lever at the side of his desk and pulled it. A section of the bookshelves along one wall slid open, revealing a moldy, brick-lined pa.s.sage. The man in the checked suit entered it and was lost to sight.

"We'll follow, once I've completed one final bit of business," said Moriarty. He flung an arm around the boy's neck and dragged him behind the desk, then raised his pistol and barked, "Don't move, boy! It'll be the finish of you if you do!"

His weapon trained on the door, he waited . . .

As the police buggy dashed up, to halt beside the now-empty carriage that had brought Scott Adler and his captors to this dreadful place, the four of us jumped from it.

Lafferty ordered his driver, "Round up a squad as fast as you can!" The buggy turned and clattered off once more. "Shall we burst in and seize them?" he asked Holmes.

"No! I must go in alone. Who knows what harm he might do Scott if cornered-and I'm sure the premises blaze with hidden pitfalls. When you see the lad come out that door-unharmed-then you may come in after me."

He walked toward the warehouse door, then halted briefly and turned as Irene Adler moaned hopelessly, "Oh, Scott, Scott . . . !"

"You shall not long be parted."

Holmes said the phrase as solemnly as a man taking an oath.