Harold heard the gunshot. It was the loudest sound he’d ever heard, and his ears screamed from the volume. It sounded more like static than like any of the gunshots he’d heard on television or in movies, but it still sounded like a gunshot. And Harold heard it. Which meant, he quickly realized, that he wasn’t dead. Dead people didn’t hear the bullet as it entered their brain, he was pretty sure of that. So he hadn’t been shot. Who had?
“Step back,” Sarah said. Her tone was insistent but calm. Harold looked over at her and at the gun she held before her. She’d fired the shot. But as he turned his head to the Goateed Man, he saw that neither of them had been hurt. The man obeyed Sarah, stepping back away from Harold. When he moved, Harold could make out the hole that had been ripped by her bullet in the wall behind him. She hadn’t been trying to kill anyone, Harold realized. Just to make a point.
If the bullet hadn’t done the job, the look on Sarah’s face certainly did. The man stepped back farther, and he even lowered his gun without being asked to.
“The bleeding hell are you doing?” the man said to Sarah.
“I’d ask you the same thing,” she responded. “No one was supposed to die.”
“I don’t see how it’s your problem whether I kill this bastard or not.”
“It is my problem,” Sarah said. “And it’s yours, too. ’Cause if you kill him, how much longer do you think I’ll let you live?”
Harold had no doubt whatsoever that she was serious. He felt himself growing light-headed. He was coughing, choking, trying to get some air into his lungs but finding himself unable to take a breath. He was suffocating-and growing panicked.
Sarah glanced at him quickly.
“Breathe slowly, Harold,” she said. “Calmly. Slow, deep breaths. You just had the wind knocked out of you. That’s right. Very slow. Don’t try to take in too much air at once or you’ll choke more. There you go. There you go.”
Harold did as she suggested and felt the oxygen warming his lungs. He tried to press himself up to his feet but stumbled. He was still lightheaded, and he doubted that the wound on his head was helping. He looked down and saw a line of blood that had dribbled to the floor. He raised his hand to his head and, bringing it back down in front of his face, saw that it came back stained with red. The sight of his bloody hand made Harold nauseous.
The man held the gun to his side but didn’t drop it. Sarah tensed herself, preparing to fire again. This time she would not aim for the wall.
“Please drop the gun, Eric,” she said. “Or I’m going to shoot you.”
Harold looked up at the Goateed Man. Eric. It seemed odd for him to have a name, a real name, a normal name. He didn’t look like an Eric.
Between the wooziness in Harold’s head and the blurriness of his vision, he was never clear about the exact order of the events that unfolded next. Everything moved very fast, and the actions taken by Sarah, Eric, and even himself seemed not so much to happen in response to one another as all at once. At the very same instant Eric raised his gun toward Sarah, Sarah lowered hers and pulled the trigger. Two more violent gunshots blared across the study, rattling Harold’s senses.
The next sound he heard was far off-sirens. The actual Swiss police were finally on their way.
Screaming. Male screaming. Eric was alive, and screaming. Cursing.
Harold could see nothing. Thanks to the deafness he was temporarily experiencing due to the gunshots, all he could hear nearby was some sort of scuffling. He felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him up. A voice said something to him, but he had no idea whose it was or what message it conveyed.
He struggled to his feet. He was in no position to fight back at anyone right now, whoever happened to be pulling at him.
There was more screaming, but Harold couldn’t make any of it out. And a moan. The hand on his shoulder pulled him across the room, and he went as it directed. He felt himself tripping over things, stumbling, but he managed, somehow, to put one foot in front of the other as he tumbled through the museum. The hand was pulling him faster now, yanking more insistently. Whether he was headed toward salvation or summary execution, he didn’t know. He was not sure which outcome he’d prefer.
It wasn’t until he felt the freezing Swiss air on his cheeks that he looked up. It was darker now than when he’d broken in. The street they were on, whichever one it was, was lit only by stars and the sliding, shifting red-blue of distant police lights. Harold felt the air stab at his head and became aware of the cold nipping at his open wound. There was no way to know how much blood he’d lost. The hand kept pulling at him, however, and for the first time Harold brushed it aside. He used a sleeve of his coat to wipe the blood from his forehead. The owner of the hand, still a blurry shape, paused for an instant and turned back to face him.
“Come on,” she said. It was Sarah.
“The man… Eric… Is he…?” Harold had only the faintest idea of what he was saying.
“No, he’s alive,” she said quickly. “Bleeding, but alive. Which is about where you’re at right now. Time to run away. We have what we need.”
Harold looked down, wiping the blood from his eyes.
Under the crook of Sarah’s left arm, she held the diary.
CHAPTER 43 The Murderer
“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,”
returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can
you make people believe that you have done?”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
A Study in Scarlet
December 4,1900, cont.
The bullet tore off Bobby Stegler’s left cheek. Blood and skin sprayed against the window behind him and then slid down the glass, down onto the dirty sill.
There was screaming. The boy wailed, still very much alive. He bellowed like some demon, and he looked the part, half-faced and grotesque.
Arthur watched the boy tear at his face and the blood spurt onto his blond hair. The bullet, Arthur’s single bullet, had transformed him into something monstrous. His true form was now revealed.
Still wailing, Bobby lashed out at Arthur, grasping at the gun in his hand. They struggled. Arthur strained every muscle in his arms to hold on to his revolver, while his nose was pressed up against Bobby’s open jaw. Arthur could see the bones poking out from behind what once was a cheek.
Arthur heard Bram fire as well, but Bobby was undeterred by the shot. Arthur fought, pushing and pulling, trying to get hold of his pistol for one more shot.
He was faintly aware of a sound at the door. A single breath, caught in someone’s throat. Arthur could not turn to look.
He struggled against Bobby. The boy was so much younger than Arthur, and he was clearly stronger, despite his injuries. Arthur felt his own biceps strain to the point of bursting. He ground his teeth as he pulled, and he thought he might bite through his own molars.
The revolver in Arthur’s hand went off again. When he would think on these moments, later, this is how he would think of them: The gun simply went off. No one fired it. Certainly not he. It was simply fired. The passive voice was there for Arthur, and it understood. The gun was fired. The bullet was loosed. And yet Arthur and Bobby still struggled with all their might. The bullet had not hit either man.
Bram fired again. This time Arthur saw the metal ball carry what was left of the boy’s brains out the other end. He felt the boy’s grip slacken. With a dull, wet thump, Bobby Stegler’s corpse smacked against the wooden floorboards. He was dead.
It took Arthur a few moments to hear Bram’s voice. Arthur’s mind was pure white snow, clean and uncluttered by thoughts. He regarded Bram, his friend, his Watson, dazed and dreaming.
“What have you done, Arthur?”