"Stay there until I make a light, Russell. I've moved some things about since you were here last." A match flared and illuminated his profile, bent over an old lamp. "I have a cloth to tack up over the door edges," he said, and adjusted the flame to give the greatest light, then turned to set it on a worktable.
"My nose tells me that Mrs. Hudson produced meat pies yesterday," I said shrugging off my coat and hanging it on the peg on the door. "I'm glad she is convinced of your approaching recovery." I turned back to Holmes, and I saw his face. He was looking across the lamp to the dark corner, and whatever it was he saw there bathed his face in dread and despair and the finality of defeat, and he was utterly still, slightly bent from depositing the lamp on the table. I took two quick steps forward so I could see around the bookshelf, and there, dominating my vision, was the round reflected end of a gun, moving to point directly at me. I looked at Holmes and saw then the first fear I had ever witnessed in his eyes.
"Good morning, Mr. Holmes," said a familiar voice. "Miss Russell."
Holmes straightened his long body slowly, looking terribly, utterly exhausted, and when he replied his voice was as flat as death.
"Miss Donleavy."
EIGHTEEN: Battle royal
…There being not room for many emotions in her narrow, barbarous, practical brain.
"What, Mr. Holmes, no bon mots? I perceive you have been in Afghanistan,' or New York? Well, not every utterance a gem, perhaps. And you, Miss Russell. No greeting for your tutrix, not even an apology for the inadequacy of your final essay, which was not only sodden but hurried as well?"
At the sound of her precise, slightly hoarse voice I was overcome, pierced to the core of my being. Her voice, sweeping me into memories of her dim and opulent study, the coal fire, the tea she served me, the two occasions when she had given me a glass of rare dry sherry to accompany her rare, dry words of praise: I had thought — I had thought I knew what her feelings towards me were, and I stood before her like a child whose beloved godmother has just stabbed her.
"You do look like a pair of donkeys," she said in irritation, and if her first words had left me stunned, her quick ill humour jolted me back into life, an automatic response learnt early by all of her students: When Miss Donleavy snaps, one gathered one's wits with alacrity. I had seen her reduce a strong man to tears. "Sit down, Miss Russell. Mr. Holmes, while I have this gun pointed at Miss Russell, would you be so good as to switch on the electrical lights I see over our heads?
Move very carefully; the gun is already cocked, and it takes very little pressure to set the trigger off. Thank you. Mr. Holmes, you look considerably further from Death's door than I was led to believe. Now, if you would please bring that other chair and place it at the table to the left of Miss Russell. A bit farther apart. Good. And the lamp, extinguish it and place it on the shelf. Yes, there. Now, sit down. You will please leave your hands on top of the table at all times, both of you. Good."
I sat at arm's length from Holmes and looked past the gun's maw at my mathematics tutor. She was sitting in the very corner of the room behind a rank of shelves, so that the shadow cast by the shelves cut directly across her. The overhead glare illuminated her tweed-and silk- covered legs from the knee down, and occasionally the very end of the heavy military pistol. All else was dim: an occasional flash of teeth and eyes, a dull glint from the gold chain and locket she wore at her throat; all else was shadow.
"Mr. Holmes, we meet at last. I have been looking forward to this meeting for quite some time."
"Twenty-five years or more, isn't it Miss Donleavy? Or, do you prefer to be addressed by your father's name?"
Silence filled the laboratory, and I sat bewildered.
Did Holmes know where the woman came from? Her father —?
"Touché, Mr. Holmes. I take back my earlier criticism; you still do a nice line in bon mots. Perhaps you might explain to Miss Russell."
"It was her own name that Miss Donleavy signed on the seats of the four-wheeler, Russell. This is the daughter of Professor Moriarty."
"Surprise, surprise, Miss Russell. You did tell me what a very superior sort of mind your friend has. What a pity he was born trapped in a man's body."
With a wrenching effort I took control of my thoughts and sent them, useless as it might now seem, in the direction of the last plan that Holmes and I had laid. I swallowed and studied my hands on the tabletop.
"I cannot agree, Miss Donleavy," I said. "Mr. Holmes' mind and his body seem to me well suited to each other."
"Miss Russell," she said delightedly, "sharp as always. I must admit I had forgotten how I always enjoyed your mind. And, as you intimate, I had also forgotten that the two of you have become — alienated. I must say I often wondered what you saw in him. I could have done a great deal with you had it not been for your irrational fondness for Mr. Holmes."
I pointedly said nothing, just studied my hands. I did wonder why they weren't shaking.
"But now the fondness has turned, has it?" she said, in a voice that was soft and tinged with sadness. "So very sad, when old friends part and become enemies."
My heart leapt with hope, but I kept all expression from my face. If she believed this, we might yet get around her. It was difficult for me to tell, partly because I had to judge solely by her voice and also because my trust in my own perceptions had been badly shaken, but beyond this she also seemed somehow foreign, her reactions exaggerated, fluctuating.
I had little time to reflect on the question, because Holmes stirred at my side and spoke up, his voice flat.
"Kindly refrain from baiting the child, Miss Donleavy, and continue: I believe you have something you wish to say to me."
The round metal circle on her knee began to shake slightly, and after a brief moment of terror I heard her laughter, and I felt ill. She had been playing with me. We might have fooled her for a time, but now our act was exposed, and even the small chance we'd had with deception was no longer ours. "You are right, Mr. Holmes. I have not much time, and you have robbed me of a great deal of energy in the last few days. I have no great energy to spare, you understand.
I am dying. Oh yes, Miss Russell, my absence from the college was no sham. There is a crab with its claws in my belly and no way to remove it. I had originally planned to wait several years for this, Mr. Holmes, but I do not have the leisure now. Before much longer I will not have the strength to deal with you. It must be now." Her voice echoed in the tiled laboratory and whispered away like a snake.
"Very well, Miss Donleavy, you have me at your mercy. Let us dismiss Miss Russell and get on with the issues between us."
"Oh no, Mr. Holmes, sorry. I cannot do that. She is a part of you now, and I cannot deal with you without including her. She stays." Her voice had gone cold, so cold it was hard for me to connect it with the person who had drunk tea with me and laughed in front of a fire. Cold, and with danger uncoiling from its base. I shivered, and she saw it.
"Miss Russell is cold, and I imagine tired. We all are, my dear, but we have a while to go before the end. Come now, Mr. Holmes, don't keep your protégée here all day. I am sure you have a number of questions you would like to ask me. You may begin."
I looked at Holmes, sitting less than a yard from me.