Close at hand there were three small groups, engaged in quiet conversation. One of these included Major Wodehouse and the Home Secretary, who was dressed in his long coat with its velvet collar and cuffs and his tall hat of black silk. From the gruff confidence of Winston Churchill’s voice and his face as I had seen it in a magazine photograph, I had imagined a much taller man. Yet, though he was burly in build, I guessed that Sherlock Holmes topped him by almost a foot.
For the next hour or so we were pestered at intervals by the landlord, who had hoped to hire out his flat roof to newspaper reporters at a sovereign a time. Major Wodehouse’s aide told him briskly to “cut along” and leave us to our business. It was no part of the plan to have the press in attendance before there were events to report. Mr Churchill’s instructions were also positive in another matter. There was to be no battle until the sky was light enough for us to see who we were shooting at and to make it more difficult for our opponents to enter or escape from the houses on the far side of the street.
“It will be the easiest thing in the world, sir,” interposed Sherlock Holmes, “for those opponents to break through the ceilings of the upper rooms and travel from one house to the next. In the roof spaces there may be no proper dividing walls and, if there are, they will be no more than a single thickness of brick, easily broken through. If that happens, the battlefront will be eight houses long.”
“Quite so, Mr Holmes,” the Home Secretary said gruffly, “I am obliged to you for your very salutary reminder.” Mr Churchill then stepped behind the shelter of a chimney stack and presently I noticed the faint glow of a cigar, concealed by the brickwork from the street below.
We had a bitter couple of hours, waiting for the sky to lighten. At intervals, the landlord appeared with tots of rum and sandwiches of ham or tongue. Finally, when the steeple clocks had struck seven, the Home Secretary said,
“Very well gentlemen, let us proceed. Everyone, unless instructed otherwise, will remain under cover and out of sight.”
He descended the stairs, followed by Major Wodehouse and his aide, then by Captain Nott-Bower, who was Commissioner of the City of London Police. Sherlock Holmes and I had been bidden to bring up the rear. I could not say what use we might be but when my friend went down I kept him company. In the saloon bar of the public house, Lieutenant Ross of the Scots Guards in his greatcoat and cap was already in attendance. Though it had taken some time to rouse the Secretary of State for War and obtain permission, a detachment of the regiment, including two sergeants who were musketry instructors and nineteen private soldiers, had volunteered for this duty. Lieutenant Ross had come on ahead and the volunteers were on their way.
In the street, the snow had turned to slush. Our party moved quietly along the far side, out of view of the windows of 100 Sidney Street, behind which might lie an entire Anarchist gang or a single gunman. We crossed over to the exposed side, where Major Wodehouse, Holmes and I drew into the shelter afforded by the stone pillar at the gate of the brewery’s stable-yard. To my astonishment, the Home Secretary remained with head and shoulders in view, his identity plain, staring up at the closed curtains of Martin’s Buildings. He spoke sideways, confirming an instruction. At this, a uniformed constable walked across and banged on the front door of 100 Sidney Street. There was silence. The policeman stooped, retrieved a handful of small stones and threw them at one of the upper windows.
It was at this moment that I saw the slow and sinister protrusion of a rifle barrel from the slit of a partially opened upstairs window. Had they been hand-guns, the chance would have been doubtful but a rifle fired by a trained shot could scarcely miss Mr Churchill at this short range. There was a flash of fire from the gun barrel and a crack that reverberated like thunder between the two rows of houses. I expected to see the Home Secretary fall but he ducked his head and then straightened up again, still standing against the wall close to us. Why did he not keep down?
Now there was a second rifle barrel, protruding from a gap in the adjoining casement. I have read often enough the cliché of a man whose heart was in his mouth with fear but I never knew the truth of it more certainly until that moment. A second crack and a spurt of flame from a rifle barrel came in Mr Churchill’s direction. It was often said afterwards that he had to be compelled to take cover and this, I believe, was the source of that story. A third rifle snout appeared and again there was a bolt of fire and a crack that made the ears ring.
Like a stage magician, after three rifles had missed him at such short range, the gruff figure in the long coat and tall hat turned and walked the few yards to shelter, close to our stone pillar. It was as if the gunmen had recognised who he was, which was quite possible, and were determined to silence him at all costs. For this they paid a heavy price, by giving away their positions and numbers to the firepower which now faced them. Had they held their fire, on seeing the Home Secretary, they might have escaped in the darkness or perhaps even shot their way out before the Scots Guards were in position.
A few minutes later came the crash of a first fusillade from our side. Bullets streamed from the first of the Guards as they hastily scrambled into place. They were aiming from front rooms at street-level, where they shot from behind overturned sofas, or else had climbed up among the chimney stacks. The windows from which the Anarchist rifles had fired at first were now smashed to pieces. Their net curtains were in shreds and one of them was on fire. Then there was a command to the Guards of “Cease fire!” though our ears still rang with the echoes. Presently a further sequence of shots was exchanged, the gunmen this time keeping up the greater rate of fire. I saw one of the constables go down suddenly, among a group who were too close to the far side for their own good. “Jack, I am done!” he cried to his comrade as he spun and fell. He was taken to hospital at once and happily survived his wound.
After the first rifle shots, the weapon of the assassin, our opponents’ fire came from handguns. They laid down a barrage with which we could not at first compete. I could make out the long barrels of their Mauser automatic pistols, firing two shots every second. But while their hand-guns might be deadly in intensity they were less accurate than the rifles which their marksmen had used at first. Why had they abandoned those? As it was, their rifle barrels had merely revealed their positions. They had drawn a ferocious fire into the two upper windows of Martin’s Buildings, possibly killing half of those within. Had it been the Home Secretary’s intention to make them show themselves by offering his familiar figure as a target?
The events that followed during the next few hours were printed large in every newspaper across the land. What schoolboy did not know of “The Siege of Sidney Street” and the famous part played by the Scots Guards and Winston Churchill? Even as it progressed, the crowds and the pressure grew behind the police cordons at either end of the street, raising cheers every time our men fired back. It seemed impossible that this was the heart of London on a peaceful weekday morning, when office clerks and shop walkers were on their way to work and schoolchildren trudging to their classes. All had now played truant to watch the drama being played out.
Holmes and I remained under cover for the moment behind the gate-pillar of the coal merchant’s yard. What struck me most of all was the way in which many of the inhabitants of the street went about their normal lives as the two sides exchanged fire and the bullets sang round them. An old women with a shawl over her head crossed the street a little further down to fetch her washing, as indifferent to those bullets as if they had been the falling snow flakes.