It was difficult to establish the identity of any of the suspects. The internal security system of the Anarchist movement discouraged the use of names. Where necessary it still preferred to allude to “The Frenchman” or “The German” or “The Russian.” For every man who knew the sobriquet of “Peter Piatkoff” there seemed to be a thousand who knew “Peter the Painter.” What was not known could be betrayed, even under police questioning.
A few names were known to the police, among them such men of violence as Fritz Svaars and Yoshka Sokoloff. They had not been caught, as Holmes remarked with a sigh, and it seemed likely that they were in Russia or France by now.
Such was the situation when I went to bed a few nights later and, somewhen after midnight, had that unusual sensation of waking from a dream within a dream. After what seemed like several minutes, but was probably more like ten or twenty seconds, of dreaming about dreaming I was fully awake. It was almost four o’clock in the morning and, so far as I knew, Sherlock Holmes was in bed and asleep. He had certainly retired before midnight. Now, however, I heard voices in the sitting-room below me.
I had missed whatever they were discussing but I was quite clear in my mind that one of the voices was Sherlock Holmes and another was his brother Mycroft. There were at least two more, probably four but I could not be sure. I did not recognise these other speakers, though one of them had a very distinctive tone of voice. His words were spoken rather slowly but emphatically and, at times, with something like a growl. The voice was rather slurred on occasion, as if the tongue might be a little too large for the mouth. When this visitor concluded a rather lengthy remark, another speaker whose voice was unfamiliar to me addressed him as “Winston.”
I began to wonder whether I was not, after all, still dreaming. What were the government’s most senior civil servant, Mycroft Holmes, the Home Secretary, and someone who knew the Home Secretary well enough to call him “Winston,” doing in our sitting-room at four o’clock in the morning? The discussion was less intense now. They dropped their voices and I could make out only a rumble of talk.
Instinct told me that it would not do to walk in on their debate. On the other hand, I must be dressed and ready in case my presence should be necessary. I was just fumbling with a collar stud and tie when a board outside creaked and Holmes, perhaps seeing light under the door, tapped gently as he entered.
“I heard you moving about,” he said quietly, “I fear there is trouble boiling up near the Anarchist Hall in Jubilee Street, or rather about two hundred yards away. It seems as if we may have an insurrection on our hands. If Sergeant Atherton’s information from the underground is correct, the aim is to kill as many of our officers and officials as possible, and of as high a rank as possible. In other words, assassination under cover of a general outbreak. Rifles for the one, pistols for the other.”
I began to unscrew my trouser-press.
“What will you do?”
“Major Frederick Wodehouse of the War Office is here. So is the Home Secretary-Wodehouse picked up Mr Churchill from his house in Eccleston Square on the way. Nothing is to be said, at this stage, about either of them. It would not look well for the military to be involved.”
“And you will go with them?”
His profile, in the gaslight, looked leaner and tauter than ever I had seen it.
“This minute, old fellow. We also have a captain of the Scots Guards in attendance. Theirs is the nearest regiment, at the Tower of London. This is likely to be more than the police can deal with. We have no more room in the motor, so you must follow on as quickly as you can. Take a cab from the Metropolitan line for Stepney police station, just off Commercial Road. Ask for directions there. The desk sergeant will know where we are.”
With that he was gone. I heard footsteps and voices going down the stairs from our sitting-room to the front door. Then I took out my watch and looked at it. The hands were at just five minutes past four. Ten minutes later I was walking up Baker Street towards the rank at the underground railway. A single cabby was dozing on his perch. He was awake and alive in a second.
We did the journey to Commercial Road in less than half an hour, through a ghost-like city of empty streets and half-lit avenues. I told the cabby to wait and went up the steps, illuminated by the blue police lamp. Inside, it was as though I had stepped into the foyer of the Alhambra theatre five minutes before the curtain went up. This was plainly the headquarters of the operation, police officers pushing this way and that. I found my way to the sergeant’s desk and was answered in two words which would soon travel round the world.
“ Sidney Street.”
I was not given the number of the building but, if even half of what Holmes had told me was true, I should not need one. My cabby drove the half-mile through Stepney, past the deserted Anarchist Club, down Hawkins Street -and then no further. A helmeted constable stepped out into the roadway ahead of us, swinging his bulls-eye lantern side to side to bring the cab to a halt. As he did so, I noticed in the beam of light that snow had begun to fall. There were no tracks of other wheels to be seen.
“No way through, sir,” The policeman’s face was at the window. “The road ahead is blocked off. If you want to drive west, you must turn back and go down to Commercial Road.”
“I am a medical man, Dr John Watson. I have a rendezvous with Mr Sherlock Holmes. I understand he is with Major Wodehouse and Mr Churchill.”
“That’s different then,” the policeman said, opening the cab door, “I shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t needed presently.”
I paid off the cabby and followed the policeman through the thin drifts of the falling snow. I had not brought my medical bag with me but just then I could see-or hear-no reason why I should need it. Nor had I packed my revolver in my pocket.
Perhaps it was the snow which gave Sidney Street its sinister appearance as the clocks struck five. More probably it was the sight of a formation of men standing absolutely motionless in a side-street and uttering no sound. If this was Anarchist Communist revolution, it seemed just then to be a remarkably silent affair.
Sidney Street, as we came to its corner, was at least forty feet wide. Its terraces of plain red-brick working men’s houses faced one another. The block of eight houses which was now the centre of attention, Martin’s Buildings, was named after its owner and had been built ten years earlier. Each house had about ten rooms located on several floors. At the rear they overlooked a jumble of yards, sheds, and alleyways. At the front, the windows had a clear view across the street but only restricted visibility along its length. Immediately opposite the house which had become the focus of interest was a yard with a wooden fence and gate. Its paintwork dimly proclaimed “Isaac Dickholtz, Coal Merchant and Haulier.” On either side of the street, some of the houses had little shops on their ground floors with grilled windows and shabby black paint.
Further off, at the next road junction north, stood the tall buildings of Mann and Crossman’s Brewery with a yard and stables to the rear. The van gates also opened opposite Martin’s Buildings. In the other direction, the Rising Sun public house, which we were now approaching, occupied the next corner site on the other side of the road. The flat roofs of the Rising Sun and the cooling tower of the brewery both offered a vantage-point, looking respectively north and south along the thoroughfare towards 100 Sidney Street. There was still no sight nor sound of a gang of Anarchist assassins.