Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

He got to the opening in the trees and stopped, finally leaning forward to put only his head forward in a fast peek around the edge. Even that movement, he knew, would be target enough for a master assassin with a pistol ready. Holmes knew that even though clouds had occluded the stars, it was still lighter outside the enclosure than within, and his head would be in silhouette.

No shot. No sound.

Holmes looked again, eyes straining, but could not make out the flowing cigarette or the form of the man on the bench. It was simply too dark in that enclosure now. He realized that when the clouds had come in sometime in the last forty-five minutes, he and James had been watching the red glow of the cigarette rather than the dark outline of the man in the blackness.

No further reason to wait , thought Holmes. Raising the lantern high, seeing nothing but darkness ahead in and beyond the entrance cleft, Holmes strode quickly forward, the sound of his brushing branches as loud as an avalanche in his ears.

The instant he was through the cleft in the trees his fingers swept open the shutter on the lantern, his right arm flexing as he hefted the cosh.

The place on the bench where the man had been sitting was empty.

Where had he moved? Anywhere in the enclosure would afford him a perfect shot.

Holmes considered slamming shut the lantern’s shutter—Lucan’s sharpshooter advantages eliminated, just two men in blackness, feeling for each other, and Holmes had the knife and the cosh—but he found he was too impatient for whatever the showdown would bring to follow that saner tactic.

He moved quickly, in erratic patterns, holding the lantern away from his body, aiming the beam this way and then that way. The benches were empty. The graveled hexagon in front of the sculpture was empty. The area around the granite and bronze monument was empty.

Behind the benches . It would have been Holmes’s first choice for a hiding place if he were waiting to shoot a man here.

Holmes leaped up onto the bench and then over the high back, going to a quick crouch on the back side of the bench closest to the opening in the trees, lantern beam illuminating the narrow corridor ahead of him between the stone bench and the trees.

Empty.

Rushing forward, still in a crouch so that his head was below the level of the back of the stone bench, he reached the first corner and set the lantern on the ground, its aimed beam shooting to the left.

No shot. No sound.

Holmes looked around, saw this second corridor of space empty, saw no new breaks in the wall of foliage to his right, and he hurried to the last turn, not bothering to pause before he swept around it. He was ready to dash down the lantern in a second if he couldn’t get close enough to blind his opponent with it.

Nothing.

Holmes came out into the opening and checked all the walls of foliage. Someone could have forced his way through the tree branches and hedges and out into the opening, but Holmes certainly would have heard him do so as he approached.

Satisfied that no one else was in the enclosure, he held the lantern high again and walked toward the bronze sculpture on its two-level base. He approached it obliquely, visualizing Henry James dead, his body dropped into the vertical shaft, and Lucan’s young hunter’s eyes at one of the eyehole openings and a pistol pressed against the other opening. The eyes were large enough to pass a bullet from a revolver.

His cape-coat brushed against foliage as he crept toward the seated, brooding, still-powerful sculpture. The combination of darkness and harsh lantern light brought out the draped folds in the robe, the shadows under the cowl, the straight nose and solid chin, the up-raised and folded-in right arm with its fingers disappearing under bronze cheek and chin.

“James?” Holmes had used a normal, conversational voice and the loudness of it in the thick night made him jump.

No response.

Louder—“James?”

“I’m here,” came the oddly muffled reply from the statue’s head.

Holmes imagined the portly writer under duress, the muzzle of a pistol pressed under his double chin. For that matter, he hadn’t been certain that the muffled voice belonged to Henry James.

“What was the name of that novel of yours that I said I liked?” said Holmes, still standing close to the right side of the monument so that he could not be seen or targeted from inside the sculpture.

“What?” The echoing voice sounded more like James this time. An obviously irritated James.

Holmes repeated his question.

“The Princess Casamassima,” came the anger-tinged reply. “But what on earth does that have to do with anything?”

Holmes smiled and stepped out in front of the cowled figure. He could not help but glance over his shoulder every few seconds. “Where is he?” he asked the statue.

“I don’t have the vaguest idea, Holmes.” Holmes could hear the voice better from this new vantage point and it was definitely James’s, although muffled by the bronze. “Just after you stepped out, the cigarette glow disappeared. I didn’t see the man move . . . did not see him go out through the entrance. He just . . . disappeared.”

“All right,” said Holmes. “I missed him then. Could you please bring my bag when you come out?”

“It’s too dark,” said James through one of the eyeholes. “I can’t see where to put my feet. The shaft . . . can’t find the lock mechanism . . . I’ll try, but . . .”

“No, on second thought, it’s better that I come fetch you,” said Holmes. “Sit tight for just another moment and I’ll bring the lantern.”

But instead of going outside and to the rear of the monument, Holmes went straight across the hexagon, dropped to one knee, and began examining the graveled ground near the bench. Then he took several minutes to move the lantern close to the ground near all three benches. Then he stepped around behind the bench and did the same careful examination. He was checking the ground in the open space of the hexagon when the statue made another muffled noise.

Holmes walked over to it and held the lantern high. “What was that, James?”

“What in God’s name are you doing!” demanded the androgynous face of deepest mourning.

“Looking for the cigarettes and/or ashes,” said Holmes. “We watched Lucan—this figure in the dark—smoke at least three cigarettes to their end—we could both smell the tobacco smoke in the darkness—but there’s not a single ash or remnant of a dead cigarette anywhere. He must have dropped the ashes from the cigarettes into his palm and put the ashes and the cigarette butts in his pocket. Don’t you find that odd behavior for an innocent person, James?”

“ Damn the cigarette ashes,” said the shadow-sharpened bronze face. “Come get me out of here, Holmes. I’ve needed to relieve myself for more than an hour now.”

The hansom and its cabbie were not there when they reached New Hampshire Avenue.

“That blackguard!” cried James, referring to the driver. “That cursed driver took your money but left anyway.”

“We’ve been a long time,” said Holmes. He’d done the entire walk from the monument with his shoulders hunched until they ached, waiting for the impact of the pistol or rifle shot whose sound he would not hear. They stayed tensed out in the open of the lightly traveled avenue. There were no street lights or house lights here.

“Maybe our smoking friend took it,” said James. “What do we do now?”

“It’s only a little less than four miles back to Mrs. Stevens’s place, so we walk,” said Holmes, knowing that despite his best efforts to relax, his body would be expecting the impact of a bullet every step of the way. And for every hour and minute of the days and nights to come until this whole matter was resolved.