Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Holmes turned to face the young man, hardly more than a boy but with the black-marbled stare of a cobra. Holmes’s hands hung loosely by his sides. The sunshine felt good on his naked upper body.

“It makes more sense to kill you before I kill Cleveland,” Lucan said, obviously enjoying himself. “But it might be more fun to allow you to watch the president being shot, and then dispatch you within those fast two seconds. What do you think, Mr. Detective?”

Holmes said nothing. Behind him, the elevator doors opened.

Henry James tried to remain in the elevator cage, but the woman—taller and stronger than he was—jerked him out by the arm and pulled him along as they walked east along the Observation Deck.

There was Sherlock Holmes facing the other way, his scars like rays radiating from the moon craters in the bright daylight, and Lucan Adler had swung the rifle in their direction.

“Why Mrs. Baxter,” said Lucan with an audible sneer. “Stop there by dear old Dad and keep that goddamned Bull Dog revolver pointed downward.”

Stepping beyond Holmes so he could see her, Irene Adler aimed the pistol at Holmes’s chest and said, “I don’t want to point it downward. I want to point it at his heart.” She did just that.

Lucan laughed, a sound like steel rending steel. Above the music and noise below, he said, “And you are Mr. Henry James, the writer, whom Holmes has been dragging around behind him this month and more like a pet lamb on a string. Well, know that you will live out this day, Mr. James. I admire your writing. It is painful to read. I like pain. It should continue.”

The music stopped. The crowd cheered and then, like a tide shushing out, fell as quiet as it could.

President Cleveland began to speak. He had a big, space-filling voice, said all the newspapers, but his words were inaudible at this distance. Mouse squeaks followed by wild applause.

“The target first,” muttered Lucan and lifted and laid the Mauser along the flange of the searchlight, focusing on the president. Holmes knew that Cleveland’s chest and belly would be filling Lucan’s ’scope.

“No, Holmes first!” cried Irene Adler, aiming the pistol at Holmes from only seven or eight feet away and cocking the Bull Dog pistol.

At seeing her cock that hammer back, James reacted as he had never reacted before. He jumped at Irene Adler, managing to grab her wrist and force it down even as he realized, too late, that she had already swiveled the pistol away from Holmes and at her son.

The blast of the revolver deafened James.

Instead of hitting Lucan Adler in the chest, where she’d been aiming, the deflected shot struck the young man’s right foot. Lucan lost his balance and fell to the deck, but rolled like some jungle cat and came to one knee with the Mauser shouldered, swinging it their way.

Holmes had begun sprinting toward Lucan before the pistol fired, but James saw in an instant that he wouldn’t be able to cover the distance in time.

Cursing in pain as he knelt there, but still holding the rifle with absolute confidence, Lucan Adler aimed and fired.

James felt the bullet buzz past his right ear and Irene Adler cried out and fell face forward. He had the presence of mind to look for the pistol, but she must have been lying on it.

The wounded, cursing Lucan started to swing the rifle barrel at Holmes but Holmes had closed the gap and kicked it aside. The heavy rifle went rattling across the paved promenade.

Lucan had time to crouch and suddenly there was a flat, deadly blade protruding from between the knuckles of his right hand. His right sleeve was torn and James could see the elegant mechanism that had thrust the blade forward. He swung at Holmes’s bare belly and, although the detective arched his back like a bow, James could see blood fly.

Lucan Adler turned, leaped over the fence, grabbed the bicycle grips, cut the restraining string with one swing of his bladed hand, and began plummeting out of sight down the long guy wire.

Sherlock Holmes had not paused a second. With his blood still misting the air, he ran at the fence, jumped to its top, and leaped out into two hundred feet of open space.

The unseen crowd of a hundred thousand people roared as if applauding Sherlock Holmes’s suicide. Running toward the south fence beside the searchlight, Henry James saw, in his peripheral vision, huge flags unfurling from the Agriculture and other giant buildings, the huge Statue of the Republic in the Lagoon directly south of him finally dropping its veil, fountains leaping into life. Part of him realized that President Cleveland had lived long enough to depress the gold telegraph key on its velvet pillow.

Later, James had the thought that any true gentleman would have first checked the condition of Mrs. Irene Adler Lorne Baxter, and helped her if he could. But at that moment Henry James didn’t give the least goddamn about the condition of Lucan Adler’s mother.

He reached the fence at the southeast corner of the building and gasped.

Holmes hadn’t been able to leap far enough to get his hands on the rubber-tipped bicycle handlebar. Instead, one hand caught Lucan Adler’s belt, the other hand gripped his shirt collar.

The collar came off and the shirt ripped down the seam, even as Lucan began to twist his body toward Holmes. With Lucan’s sleeve torn open, James now saw the knife mechanism strapped on his forearm work again—slipping a wide, flat blade between the assassin’s knuckles.

Holmes swung himself around the already turning killer and began clambering up Lucan’s front like a monkey on a man-shaped climbing bar. His right hand now had a grip around Lucan’s neck, pulling the younger man’s head down like a lover enforcing a kiss, even while his left shifted quickly from Lucan’s belt to grab his right wrist, arresting the blade. But not quickly enough to avoid another wound. James saw blood mist the air again . . . Holmes’s blood.

Henry James looked around wildly. Part of his mind had recorded the sound of the elevator going down and now it was arriving at this level again, but that meant nothing to James. Irene Adler was still lying face-down, possibly dead.

James saw the Mauser rifle. He quickly picked it up—dear Christ it was heavy—and laid it across the top of the metal fence to steady himself while he tried to look through the telescopic sight.

Holding the wood under the barrel tightly, he worked the well-oiled and expertly assembled bolt. A complete bullet—James could see the lead points with little X’s gouged into them—ejected and landed under the German searchlight.

For all James knew, that was the last live round in the rifle. He didn’t have time to check. Nor did he wonder, as anyone who knew firearms would have, just how far off true the telescopic sight had been knocked in all its being thrown here and there.

For a moment nothing made sense and then, fuzzy but solid in the circle, there were Holmes and Lucan spinning as the single-wheeled mechanism flew down the cable. Lucan’s white shirt was torn to tatters and covered with blood—Holmes’s blood, James realized. Holmes’s bare skin was as white, torn, and blood-spattered as his opponent’s shirt.

The only reason they hadn’t reached the bottom of this long guy-wired slide was that Lucan’s wheel mechanism hadn’t been designed for so much weight. It lurched along at high speed for thirty or forty feet, then caught, almost stopped, then lurched down and forward again.

The two men were fighting more like animals than men. When they were still moving quickly, Holmes grabbed Lucan’s right wrist and forced the metal release for the knuckle knife up against the wire. Sparks flew. The blade mechanism bent into itself and was now of little use in the fighting.