John Adams - The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I nodded.

He slowed as Lestrade approached a fork in the road, allowing the hansom to gain some more distance from us. For his part, Lestrade seemed to be gathering speed, anxious to reach his destination. He selected the wider path and disappeared beyond a cluster of trees, cattails, and reeds.

Our carriage rolled forward and then Holmes brought us to a shuddering stop. Lestrade's hansom stood at the side of the road, empty.

We moved quickly, climbing out of the carriage, spreading out, peering around in hopes of spotting him.

Lestrade had selected the spot for his ambush well indeed. It was very dark, the moonlight shrouded by branches and hanging moss. Holmes turned his attention to the ground, making out footprints despite the dim light. He spun on his heel, deducing where Lestrade was hidden, but he was too late. Lestrade stepped from behind a tree where he had hidden, nearly knee-deep in swamp muck, and pointed a pistol at Holmes's chest.

"Nice hat," Lestrade said sarcastically.

Holmes doffed the porkpie hat and sent it spinning into the swamp. "It served its purpose," he said.

"We can drop them games," Lestrade said. "You tricked me good, but I tricked you, too."

"Perhaps."

"Led you the wrong way, didn't I? Got you trapped, don't I?"

"You didn't note our presence until a few minutes ago," Holmes said, "just before you made that last turn. Should we go back to that last fork, I surmise we will find what we seek."

Lestrade flinched. But his pistol did not waver. He stepped closer to Holmes. "You're real smart," he said. "But smart don't matter when you're dead." He took another step. "What's the matter? Got nothing else clever to say?" Another step. "You're smiling," he said. "Why in heaven is that?"

"I'm smiling, Lestrade," Holmes said, "because you're holding the pistol on the wrong man."

While Holmes had engaged the deputy chief's attention, I had carefully drawn my old service revolver. At this cue, I aimed carefully and fired. Lestrade collapsed as though thunderstruck, and Holmes quickly stepped forward and put the policeman's weapon into his own pocket.

"The shoulder, Watson?"

"Villain or not, he is still a police officer and the cousin of a trusted ally," I said, hurrying to tend to Lestrade's injury. It was no glancing wound. He would live, but he had already slipped into unconsciousness and would not wake soon. "Look, Holmes," I said. I held up a small gris-gris I had discovered on a leather band beneath Lestrade's shirt.

"A symbol of fealty to Jacaré, perhaps," Holmes said. "Leave him in his cab. Your gunshot might have been noted and there is little time to lose."

If we had followed Lestrade with caution, then we now moved with reckless urgency. One carriage wheel left the ground as we spun onto the fork that Lestrade had led us away from.

"Open the chest there," Holmes said, nodding at a small wooden chest at our feet.

I did so and discovered two gun belts, each with two holstered pistols. "Good God, Holmes," I said. "Are my own weapon and Lestrade's not enough?"

Holmes steered the carriage around a deep puddle in our path. "Peacemakers," he said. "I believe those are the types of weapons the Holingbrokes favor. Should Jacaré have accomplices close to hand, we might need their assistance."

We traveled a few minutes more before Holmes pulled our carriage over again. I had spotted nothing to differentiate this stretch of road from any other, but Holmes gestured for me to leave our conveyance behind. "I smell smoke," he said. "And there is light ahead. Let us proceed on foot."

I slung the gun belts over my shoulder and followed him. What we were on could hardly be called a road anymore. The ground was muddy and split by grasses. I nearly lost my shoes at one spot. Bats swooped and dove amongst the trees around us, feasting on insects.

After several minutes we heard shouts, coarse laughter, and screams of pain. We emerged from a cluster of cypress trees into a clearing, the moonlight suddenly bright. Perhaps a dozen men were gathered near a ramshackle house beside the waters of the swamp, jostling each other as they paced along a wooden deck and a long pier, a bonfire blazing beside them near the shoreline. They looked like pirates from a century or more earlier, with wide-brimmed hats and vests over loose-fitting shirts. They brandished swords, too, though their guns were modern enough.

It was obvious which man was O Jacaré. No matter what else held their attention, the others stepped from his path with expressions of deference and fear. Jacaré wore a sweeping, rakish hat with a bandana tied beneath. A single gem, perhaps an opal, gleamed in the center of a patch over his left eye. He had a full black beard that stretched down to his belly, a jade-green jacket, and alligator boots. The sword that hung from his waist glittered with gold and gems.

But more striking even than the figure of Jacaré was the sight that held the pirates' attention. A huge, dead bald cypress tree at the water's edge was being used as a sort of gallows, a rope slung over one heavy branch and held in the massive hands of a huge pirate, bald and shirtless, nearly seven feet tall. At the other end of the rope, just barely above the water, dangled the twisted form of the Holingbroke brothers, struggling against their bonds and howling in pain and fear as the giant shook them.

As Holmes and I crept closer, I was shocked by the sight of the brothers. They were shirtless, their backs bloody from the lashes of a whip. I had seen an illustration of them before, and read of their condition in my medical journal, but my mind had trouble reconciling the sight of them, two upper bodies, nearly identical, sharing a single waist and single pair of legs.

Then I saw something that shocked me even more.

Something enormous frothed the water beneath them, some tremendous beast hidden in the muck. The pirate dangled the brothers lower until one's head splashed into the water, and then the beast reared up, trying to take his head in its enormous pale jaws. The pirate yanked them back upward and the creature missed by inches, crashing back into the water with a frustrated hiss and splashing the pier with a white, scaled tail.

I turned toward Holmes in astonishment, but he was using the distraction to run toward the bonfire at an oblique angle, keeping it between him and the pirates. I followed his example.

"Holmes, that creature-"

"An albino alligator," he said. "Quite large. Jacaré wrote about it to Professor Moriarty. It lives nearby and he lures it close from time to time for games such as these." He peered past the flames. "Twelve men," he said. "And should the large one drop his rope, it will doom the Holingbrokes. Suggestions?"

I looked at the situation again, recalling my military experience, recalling Afghanistan. It was hopeless on the face of it. Two against twelve, the leader a ruthless criminal overlord. I turned to Holmes. "Yes," I said. "I have a plan."

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I spun around and found myself face to face with O Jacaré, a smile cutting through the mass of his huge black beard. "I hope it's a mighty fine plan, Dr. Watson. Cause if I were in your shoes, I'd be sweating, I tell you true."

Jacaré and his pirates led us to the dock where the Holingbroke brothers still swayed upside down from the rope, their faces resolute. I'd managed to shift the gun belts away from view under my coat, though that seemed little enough advantage for the moment.

"Heard a lot about you, Mr. Holmes," the pirate said. "Impressive, you tracking me from so far away."

"Elementary," said Holmes.

"You tricked Lestrade into leading you here, right? He dead?"

"Merely incapacitated."

"Like I say, impressive. He ain't dumb. Little less impressive, though, you getting caught."