Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

“Well, well!” he drawled as an expression of withering contempt flooded his features. “What in the name of all that is loathsome and diseased is standing upon our doorstep?”

I glanced up and nearly lost my footing as I set my boot on the metal support to descend from the cab. Leaning on our door, with his arm upraised as if to ring the bell, was Leslie Tavistock. My companion fleetly crossed the street, stopping on the kerb some few feet beyond our front step.

“What the devil do you think you are doing, Tavistock?” he demanded. The rumpled fellow whirled around to face us, then rushed down with his arms outstretched and his brown eyes wild with fear.

“Oh, Mr. Holmes, is that you? Of course it is. Dr. Watson—Mr. Holmes—you must help me! I can hardly overstate the urgency of my visit.”

Holmes brushed past him to the door, his key already in his hand. “I am afraid I am professionally rather busy just now. My schedule could not possibly accommodate you.”

“But you must, Mr. Holmes! My very life is in danger. It is horrible, too horrible to contemplate!”

“Is it indeed? I’m afraid I do not find the idea of your life being threatened horrible in the smallest degree. De gustibus non disputandum, * you know.” He threw open the door.

“You must feel as if I’ve wronged you,” Tavistock pleaded, rubbing his hands together desperately. “Never mind about that. I am prepared to pay any price so long as you agree to save me!”

“I tell you for the last time, you ask the impossible.”

“I’ll print a retraction, Mr. Holmes—your work on this case will be trumpeted from every street corner!”

“Remove yourself from my stairs or you will regret it,” Holmes said inexorably, turning as if to go inside.

“Mr. Holmes!” Tavistock cried once more, and seized his left shoulder in an effort to detain him. In an instant, my friend had shifted his weight, whirled upon his left foot, and delivered the journalist a powerful blow to the side of his face. Tavistock fell backward down the steps and landed prostrate upon the pavement gasping for air, the wind knocked from his lungs. Holmes promptly resumed his journey up the stairs to our rooms.

I wished very badly simply to follow him, slamming the door he had left open for me emphatically as I did so. However, my medical instincts prevailed, and I approached the pathetic figure lying splayed beneath our windows.

“Your nose appears to be broken. Can you stand?” I offered him a hand and half lifted him to a sitting position on our steps.

“Oh, I am ruined!” he gasped, fumbling for his handkerchief.

“Here.” I offered my own. “I must say, after the way you’ve treated Sherlock Holmes, I hardly think you deserve any less.”

“Deserve! It was in the interests of my profession, nothing more,” he whimpered, attempting to stem the tide of blood from his nose. “And now the source of all my information is revealed to be a degenerate lunatic, and Mr. Holmes will not consent to—”

“Stop a moment,” I interrupted him. “You would reveal nothing of your source to us before—indeed, you as much as declared undying fealty—and now you refer to him as a lunatic?”

“He is the lowest sort of aberration. I know it, I have seen! I followed him, you realize. I tracked him to his home.”

“And what did you discover?” I asked carefully.

“There were jars upon—no, no, it is far too revolting to speak of. I will be pilloried! My character decimated, my career ended.”

“What a pity,” said I, rising deliberately. “By the by, whatever possessed you to follow your source?”

“I was suspicious. I wish to heaven I had never thought to trail him, but I wanted to know how he’d got his miraculous information.” He commenced sobbing bloodily into his coat sleeve. “If he finds me out, he will kill me, I know it!”

“When did you follow him?”

“Last night. After he stopped by my office to ask for his letters back. He said the force would come after him if they discovered he had spoken to the press.”

“The force?” I repeated, praying my tone was as casual as I hoped. “What have they to do with it?”

“He is a police constable. His name is Edward Bennett. You cannot know how horrible it was, Dr. Watson. God help me! I am done for.” His head collapsed once more upon his arm.

“Come upstairs at once,” I said.

“Oh, bless you, bless you, Dr. Watson!”

“Get a hold of yourself, and follow me.” I advanced up the stairs and into our sitting room with the thrill of new-sparked hope shining in my breast.

“Watson!” called Holmes when he heard me enter. He had divested himself of his mud-bespattered clothing and was as immaculate as ever, though he rubbed at his shoulder gingerly. “Where on earth have you put the—by the Lord!” he growled when he saw who stood beside me.

“He has discovered the identity of his source, Holmes. He knows where Bennett lives.”

“Bennett has abandoned his City dwelling,” Holmes shot back, still casting about for I knew not what. “If he hadn’t, I would not now be forced to scour his bank accounts, his former office, his family tree, and his preferred tobacconist. There was a stub in the dog grate—”

“He knows where Bennett stayed last night, Holmes. Before—before it had been done,” I added lamely.

“Ha. Here they are.” Grasping the matchbox, the detective stopped to light a cigarette and regarded the pressman with wintry disdain. “What a very interesting twist of events. Curiosity got the better of you, did it? You wanted to see what sort of line Bennett was investigating? You dogged him to his abode and then watched as he left again, which, equipped as you were, was as good as an invitation to break into his house. You’ve a cut under your right wrist just where an amateur cracksman would nick it on the windowpane, which tells me you used a glass cutter rather than a lock pick. Then you lit a candle stub without a holder and took a look round. The wax has dripped onto your sleeve in two places. Next, I imagine you laid eyes on a relic or two from Bennett’s past adventures, and his odd prescience became a trifle clearer to you. The red weal on the back of your hand from hot wax dripping upon bare flesh without remark proves your discovery was an unusual one, whatever it was. You then fled the premises. Am I close to the truth?”

Our visitor’s eyes were open and staring in awe. “It’s as you say. For God’s sake, help me, Mr. Holmes. It is more than a man can bear.”

I had never seen such an expression of loathing on Sherlock Holmes’s face before, and I hope I never will again. But just as quickly, his brow cleared and he approached our visitor with measured steps.

“Do you know, Mr. Tavistock, I do have a mind to help you. I shall just outline my little proposition. If you tell me where this rat is hiding, I will not tell all of London you are an ally of Jack the Ripper, I will not see that you are arrested for breaking and entering, and I will not throw you out of that window onto the pavement below.”

Leslie Tavistock gaped at Holmes, then whispered, “I do not know where he is.”

“Come, sir,” said Holmes, and his voice was deadly quiet.

“That is to say—I mean—I followed him, yes, but I’ve no notion where I was! The alleys all twisted and turned—”

“Mr. Tavistock,” my friend interrupted, “you will now tell me absolutely everything you can recall about your journey to Bennett’s house. Please bear in mind that you see before you a man who has squandered the last vestiges of his patience.”

The coward hid his still-bleeding face from us by turning to the window while shutting his eyes in desperate concentration.