The stairs yielded to the ironwork bridge that spanned the tracks beneath, and I raced down it, amid the intricacy of strut work held stout by fist-sized rivets and baked under bright black paint. It was like being swallowed by the Industrial Revolution itself, and I could hear my footsteps echoing against the iron grid of the flooring. Echoes were everywhere, for I had entered a cavernous space, more cathedral than station, overtopped with a vault of pane glass now dark for lack of sun to penetrate it from above, sustained by yet more latticed girders, all of it heavy with the smell of combustion, for the engines ate coal like hungry monsters, belched smoke and soot and grit, which had already turned the shining structure ancient in effect, with smears of carbon accumulating on glass and polished tile far faster than the architects had calculated. I came to a vast stairway and raced down the glowing marble, to be deposited on an endless platform two feet above the tracks. It was a vast and empty space, unpopulated except by the wild disarray of shadow, and far away, at the end of the platform at the exact entrance to the tunnel through which fled or raced the mighty trains, were the two men.
It was as if they were in primitive combat, like two ancient priests set to battle for control of the cult and policy for the future: the man of science and rationality and the man of pure rage and gift for action, until he was nothing but action. Man of future, man of past. From whence we came against whence we were going. Were they about to fight? Good Christ, what would such an outcome be, the colonel’s skill and evident muscularity matched against the larger size of the other man? The colonel would have tricks, the professor size and weight. The colonel would be fast and mean, but the professor would have righteousness on his side, and although God clearly did not exist, I felt that if He did, He would step in on the side of the professor. If He did not, I would come to the professor’s aid with my trusty double-barrel, which I withdrew from its holster and positioned in my hands so that my thumb abutted both hammers and could quickly adjust them to active condition. I would in my small way speak for civilization, justice, the powerless and truly unmourned unfortunates, and all the high moral noble causes that man has fought for. That is, assuming I remembered to cock the damned thing!
I raced toward the combatants, who, I could see, were circling each other, wily antagonists caught up in the drama of whether it was best to spring or counter-spring. At that point the colonel chose a policy. It was the policy of the spring.
Like a ram, he built off the power of his thighs a lunge that carried him hard against the professor, finding that man ill prepared to meet such a charge. The professor yielded, falling backward and almost immediately setting himself, though not with much in the way of confidence, and they butted together, came apart on impact, closed again, grappled, arms flailing, feet shuffling, leverage sought, strength avoided, both at full strength bent hellaciously against the other. It was not boxing, which I had seen and admired for its science. There was no science, only strength pitted against strength, wit against wit, and in a second, the colonel used some trick to go under and around the larger man and bring him with a thud to earth. The professor took the fall with grace, rolled, and came up to face his antagonist, who had not found footing enough to pursue advantage, and the two crashed together again, all limbs flailing, hands snapping, gouging, each trying to grab something. They were too close, I saw, to unlimber classic punches, so it was all about strength of grip and the clever slipperiness of escape.
It was also horrible. Each face was gnashed in fury, and each had bared fangs, and each set of eyes was clenched into slits behind which each gauged the other, looking for weakness. I got there and heard “You insane bastard, you monster!” from the professor as he leaped and closed on the smaller man, while the colonel shimmied loose and found freedom to throw a hard punch in the midriff, which straightened the professor but did not stop him from landing his own blow flush on the man’s ear, banging the head backward.
They were so caught in their crazed intensity that they had not even recognized my presence. I flew at them, turning at the last second to deliver a cross-body impact with my shoulder and knock them both back and apart. The colonel slipped but was nimble enough to regain his footing.
I leveled the pistol at him. “Hold, sir, by God, or I’ll dispatch.”
“He has an ally!” screamed the colonel to God. “Mad but with an ally.”
“Thank God, Jeb,” said the professor.
“Sir, draw away so that you are not covered by the gun,” I said, and then the colonel moved against me so fast it was a blur, and in a second I felt the gun yanked hard from my hands. He pivoted to thrust me between himself and the professor, who lurched at me, and for just a second the three of us were in some insane Laocoön of struggle and tangle, the gun the serpent with which and for which we all struggled, and there was then a moment when the colonel managed his trick and stepped back, leveling it, screaming, “Now, by God, you madmen, back and desist or I shall unleash the volley!” and as he turned to rotate the gun to cover the professor, he was the fraction of a second late, and the professor gave him a mighty two-handed shove, and back he went to precipice and over, where he hit with a thud on the tracks, the gun flying away.
I meant to regain it, but in that exact second the colonel, not three feet from and two feet beneath me, was illuminated in the glare of a locomotive’s lamp, and in the next fraction of a second—no watch existed fine enough to measure the speed at which all this transpired—he was gone and the raging engine whizzed by us in its own penumbra of blurred speed, a great burgundy and bronze beast, gleaming and glowing, all parts grinding, syncopating pistons, spraying contrails of steam and spark and sulfurous fume from several sources. It was still a hundred yards of platform from full halt.
If the colonel screamed as fate took him, I do not know; I heard nothing, so loud was the roar of the engine.
And that fast, it was over.
I stood, mind slow to calculate or react, rooted in abject paralysis, gibbering for air and words, finding neither, aware I had the trembles bad, and felt the sweat literally gushing from my body. When I returned to sentience, it was as if nothing had happened. I was standing next to the professor on the platform, the train was at full halt, bringing a sense of light and civilization to the emptiness, a few last passengers were ambling off, hurrying to get to bread, bed, or drink. No alarm had been raised, no crisis seemed to have been unleashed, no whistles, no Bobbies, no rush of witnesses, no panicked crowds.
“He’s gone,” the professor said.
I had no words.
“He went down too close to the engine for the engineer to see him, and it’s too much machine for a tremor to be felt. They’ll find him in the morning. Come on, now, let’s depart.”
“Should we—”
“No,” said the professor. “If it becomes known now, it’s out of our control, and then it’s anybody’s story. Besides, let the little bastard have his half-column in the Times, and everybody will read it as a suicide, and there’ll be a week of ‘Poor old Woodruff, VC and all.’ Then we can do the right proper job of telling the city the story of Jack and what we wrought and why no more gals will be sliced apart, and we will get what is coming to us.”
It made sense then. It makes sense even now. Holmes always gets his man.
“Let’s hence,” he said, bending to secure the butcher knife that lay afoot.
And we went out of the station into the cool December air.