Arthur looked at the messy sheets of printing paper on the small desk, he looked at the ink-stained clothes strewn haphazardly across the floor, and he knew that Bobby Stegler was not a man. He was a beast. And Arthur would see that he was put in a cage where he belonged, to live out his miserable days until his death, when his heart could be cut from his chest by a doctor’s scalpel and that black, wrinkled organ could be placed in a jar for the edification of future generations. “This is the cold heart of a dead man,” the typewritten sleeve on the bell jar would read, “and this is what it looks like when a heart dies years before its owner.” In the bright twentieth century, when reason ruled the world, this boy would serve as a reminder of the dark years that had passed, and of the generation-Arthur’s generation-which had led them all from superstition into the brilliant rationality of science.
But first he would need to be caught. And so Arthur and Bram got to work, silently and methodically. They searched the clothes, the bed, the desk, the chairs, and into the tight closet. They searched for evidence. Arthur hoped to find the wedding allegations-this boy would be arrogant enough, proud enough of his villainy, to have saved them, Arthur suspected. And with the allegations in hand, the Yard would have to listen to him. Failing that, they hoped to find letters from any of the dead girls written to Bobby Stegler. Or perhaps proofs of the girls’ pamphlets, which would at least prove that he knew them. There were a dozen possible pieces of evidence they might find here, and they needed only one.
When the first sweep of the room produced nothing of interest, they searched again. The minutes wore on, and Bram began to express concern about the hour. At some point one of the inhabitants of the house was bound to return. And it wouldn’t do for Arthur and Bram to be caught ransacking their home.
But Arthur would not leave. He would not think of it until something useful had been discovered. He had followed his scarlet thread of murder too far to stop here, or even to come back and try again at a later date. This would end tonight, and by the morning, so help him, Bobby Stegler would be in the care of Inspector Miller and his men.
The search continued.
“We must leave, Arthur,” said Bram as his impatience grew. “What if Tobias returns? Or the sister?”
Arthur pulled back his coat, showing off the revolver strapped to his waist.
“Then we will explain the situation fearlessly and be on our way. What are they going to do to us? Call the Yard? I’m sure Bobby Stegler would appreciate having the Yard men sniffing about his quarters.”
“I have no natural aversion to breaking and entering, don’t misunderstand. But we have to be discreet about this, don’t you think?”
“I think,” said Arthur, “that we have to find something that we can use here. And this jabbering is not going to help us do it.”
He turned from the desk before him to the windowsill. A few used, broken pens lay on the sill, and one had even dripped ink onto the white paint. Arthur touched at the pens and then raised his head to the window, where he found himself inches away from the smiling face of Bobby Stegler.
Arthur froze and caught his breath. For a second he was motionless, watching what could only be a specter in the window. But as the boy’s smile widened and the window was pulled open from the outside, Arthur realized that there was no ghostly presence at work. The boy was sitting on a tree branch outside the window. For all Arthur knew, he might have been watching them the whole time.
Arthur stepped back as Bobby Stegler stepped into the bedroom through the open window.
“As soon as I saw the light on, from the street, why, I knew it was you!” said Bobby. “I just knew it!” He closed the window behind him and looked at Bram.
“And you would be Mr. Stoker, wouldn’t you?” continued the boy as he moved the blond hair from his eyes. “I’ve been looking after you two. It seems you’ve been looking about for me, too!” Bobby laughed then, and the sound was hideous.
Arthur drew the gun from his waist and held it in front of him.
“Be quiet,” said Arthur, “and be very still, do you understand? Or I will shoot you here and now.”
The boy smiled again and looked over at Bram.
“If Arthur doesn’t,” said Bram as he pulled a revolver from his own coat, “then I most certainly will.”
“Oh, ho,” said Bobby, “my two detectives! You’ve really taken your roles quite seriously, haven’t you? But come off it. You don’t want to shoot me, not after everything I’ve done for you.
“Why, Arthur, don’t look at me so! I’ve saved your life! Frankly, don’t you think we should be sharing a pint o’ bitters and laughing over our good fortune? Those bleeding cunts were going to kill you. I know about the letter bomb. Didn’t find out till I’d already had my way with that last one, mind you. I can’t give myself too much credit. I didn’t kill them to save your life, but by the by, as I’ve killed, so I’ve without a doubt saved you!”
“They weren’t going to kill me,” said Arthur. “Not really. And I won’t defend them, all right, I won’t defend the horrible things those girls were planning. But you… What you’ve done is infinitely so very much worse. You murdered three innocent women.”
“Innocent?” Bobby Stegler’s face lit up with incredulity. “You can’t mean that. Innocent? Three queer dollymops with a boxful of dynamite? You must know they were… well, I think they loved each other. I mean, I think they loved each other, as if one were a man! Emily Davison and Janet Fry most certainly did. My God, can you imagine? They were horrors, those hairy cunts. And they were out to remake the world-our world-in their hairy-cunted image.”
As Arthur held the revolver in his hand, he felt a shaking in his arm. He felt himself twitching. He imagined the faces of those dead girls-sweet, pale, and mutilated. More than anything else he had ever wanted, he wanted at this moment to pull the trigger. To see this ugly thing before him smitten from the face of the earth.
“Arthur,” said Bram. “Don’t.”
As usual, Bram could read his thoughts exactly. Bobby Stegler looked back and forth between the two men, and something new registered on the boy’s face. Curiosity. As if it had never before occurred to him that Arthur might actually fire the revolver.
“Oh!” Bobby said. “Are you going to shoot me? I mean, you’re honestly thinking about shooting me? I just can’t… My!” He pressed his hair away from his face again and scratched at his scalp. “Seems rather unlike you, doesn’t it, Dr. Doyle? I mean, I don’t have a weapon on me. Unarmed and all that. Not a threat to your person. You’d be killing me in cold blood like, wouldn’t you? The storyteller has a gun, and he’s fit to use it. Well then. All right. It’s up to you then, I suppose. What are you going to do now, Dr. Doyle? Are you going to shoot me? Or are you going to tell me a story?”
Arthur looked deeply into the boy’s clear blue eyes and scanned the contours of his handsome face. Arthur could hear something, faintly, in the distance. A rushing sound. A crash of water against rock. He wasn’t sure if it was real or not, but he heard it all the same. Torrents of water rushing over a cliff. He tuned his ears to the noise and recognized the tone. He steadied his hand and listened to the sound, from the back of his mind, of the Reichenbach Falls.
CHAPTER 42 The Sherlock Holmes Museum
[Holmes]pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter
was he who plotted alone. I was nearer him than anyone else,
and yet I was always conscious of the gap between.
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
“The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”
January 17, 2010
From the base of the mountain, below the Reichenbach Falls, Harold stared across the Hauptstrasse at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. He shivered and pulled his thin coat tighter against the Swiss air. At just after six in the evening, the final spots of orange sunlight were disappearing to the west, behind the museum. The unlit streets were getting darker, and with every passing minute they were getting darker faster. From his perch on the other side of the wide road, Harold could see two museum guards locking up for the night. It would only be a few more minutes now. He clenched his fists in his pocket. He could not remember the last time he’d been so cold.