Professor Slocombe looked quizzically towards Omally who was catching flies with his mouth. “Is this true?” he asked.
“In most respects; it fair put the fear of the Almighty into me I can tell you.”
“We are indeed dealing with mighty forces here,” said Sherlock Holmes, springing to his feet. “And now I think that should we wish to entertain any hope of saving your friend we had best move with some expediency. Let us pray that the trail is not yet cold.” Without uttering another word he whisked on his tweedy jacket and plunged out through the French windows, followed by Professor Slocombe. Omally shook his head in total disbelief at it all, tossed back his drink, and followed in hot pursuit.
Holmes strode ahead up the sweeping tree-lined drive of the Butts Estate and crossed the road towards the Memorial Library. Before Pooley’s bench he halted and threw himself to his hands and knees. “Aha,” he said, taking up the spent butt of an expensive cigarette. “He’s been here and he walked towards the kerb.” Omally and the Professor looked at one another. Omally shrugged. Holmes scrutinized the roadway. “He entered a roadster here and was driven off at some speed in that direction.”
“Can you make out the licence plate number?” Omally said cynically.
Holmes looked him up and down coldly. “I can tell you that he was helped into the car by a gentleman of foreign extraction, who parts his hair on the left side and has his shoes hand-made, size seven and a half.”
Omally’s eyes widened. “Antoine, Bob the bookie’s chauffeur.”
“Such was my conclusion. Now, unless you wish to waste more valuable time in fruitless badinage, I would suggest that we make haste. Time is of the essence.”
“Lead on,” said John Omally.
It is a goodly jog from the Memorial Library to the old quarry, but Holmes led the way without faltering once upon his course. Here and there along the route he dropped once more to his knees and examined the road surface. Each time Omally felt certain that he had lost his way, but each time the detective rose again and pointed the way ahead. At length the three men turned into the old quarry road. Ahead in the distance lay the crumpled wreckage which had been Jim Pooley. With a small cry Omally bounded forward and came to a standstill over the disaster area. “Oh, no,” said he, sinking to his knees. “Oh no, it wasn’t worth this.”
Sherlock Holmes and the Professor slowly approached, the old man supporting himself upon his stick and wheezing terribly. “Is he…?” the words stuck in the Professor’s throat.
Omally buried his face in his hands. “My true friend,” he mumbled, his voice choked by emotion. He slumped back on his knees and stared up at the sky. Tears had formed in his deep-blue eyes and fell over his unshaven cheeks. “Why?” he shouted up at the firmament. “Tell me why?”
Holmes came forward and, stooping, turned Pooley’s right palm upwards. The eighteen lines glowed darkly in the otherwise brilliant sunlight. “There is nothing you can do for him now,” he said.
“No!” Omally elbowed the detective’s hand away. “Leave him alone, you are part of this. What the hell is going on here anyway? Why did it happen?”
“Come, John,” said the Professor, laying a slim hand upon the Irishman’s shoulder. “Come away now, there is nothing that can be done.”
Omally looked up bitterly at the old man. “You knew about this, didn’t you?” he said. “You knew something bad was going on, you should have stopped it. You and your numbers and your magic.”
“Come, John, come please.”
Omally rose slowly to his feet and stared down at Pooley’s mortal remains. “I will kill the man who did this, Jim,” he said slowly and painfully.
Professor Slocombe pressed his hand once more to John’s shoulder, and led the stumbling man away.
“All well and bloody good,” came a voice from the grave. “But who is going to turn my head around for me?”
Omally spun about. “Jim, you old bastard!”
“Who else would it bloody be? My head, John, if you please? It is most uncomfortable.”
The lads at the Cottage Hospital were nothing if not thorough. Spending their days as they did, playing dominoes and hunt the hypodermic, they were more than willing to face up to the challenge of the bloody spectacle Professor Slocombe presented them with. Having run a light-pen quickly over Pooley’s right hand they pronounced him private patient and went about their tasks with a will. Had not the Professor been a member of the Board of Governors, there seemed little doubt that they would have been a great deal more thorough than they were. Most likely to the extremes of an exploratory operation or two, with the removal of Pooley’s tonsils as an encore. As it was they prodded and poked, applied iodine, took X-rays, forced him to remove his trousers, turned his head to the right, and made him cough. As an afterthought they inoculated him against tetanus, mumps, whooping cough, and diphtheria. As Doctor Kildare came up on the hospital tele-video they summarily dismissed him with a few kind words, a large bill, and a prescription for Interferon no chemist could ever hope to fill.
“See,” said Omally, as the four men left the hospital, “all this fuss and not a bone broken.”
Pooley felt doubtfully at his bruised limbs. “I will not bore you with my opinion of the National Health Service,” said he. “Nor even waste my time bewailing my lot, as my pleas for sympathy fall for ever upon deaf ears.”
At last the four men entered the Professor’s study. A large medicinal gold watch was handed at once to the invalid who was placed in a heavily-cushioned chair. “My thanks,” said Jim, pocketing it away in his throat. The sun danced in upon the carpet and the four weary men lay slumped in various armchairs, each unwilling to be the first to break the tranquil silence. Pooley’s limbs creaked and complained to themselves. With a crackling hand he poured himself another drink. Holmes and the Professor exchanged occasional guarded glances, and the old man appeared at times obsessed with the silver pentacle which hung upon his watch-chain. Omally drummed his fingers soundlessly upon the chair’s arm and waited for the storm to break; the silence was rapidly becoming close and oppressive.
Finally Jim could stand it no longer. “All right,” he said, climbing painfully to his feet. “What is going on? You all know a lot more of this than me.”
“I don’t,” said Omally, “but I am beginning to have my suspicions.”
“So what is it?” Pooley turned to the Professor. “I have just miraculously survived an attempt upon my life by a lunatic chauffeur. Such should be the cause for some small rejoicing surely. If I was dead, Omally here would already be ordering the beer for the wake.”
Professor Slocombe stepped over to his desk and took up the day’s copy of the Brentford Mercury. He held the front page towards Jim. “Have you read this?”
Pooley perused the encircled article with little interest and less comprehension. “It’s about computer lines,” said he. It did not go unnoticed by Holmes and the Professor that his right hand slid unobtrusively away into his trouser pocket.
“It is much more than that,” said the old man. “It is an essential link in a dark chain of events which, unless severed, will inevitably engirdle us all. To our ultimate destruction.”