Becoming Holmes by Shane Peacock

yesterday and I followed ’im I did, on the quiet. Taught well, I was.” His voice rises again. “So, now I knows.”
    Yesterday
, thinks Sherlock.
The only day I didn’t come here. Crew was sent to see if I was on the trail. What would he have done if he’d found me?
    “Sir Ramsay pays the man you work for?” says the woman. “Some scoundrel?”
    “It’s not in coins.”
    “Then, in what?”
    “Never you mind in what. I wants two quid from you and your ’usband, starting Monday next. Or I tells
The News of the World
. No more questions.”
    Husband. That man is her husband
.
    “But I can’t ask Sir Ramsay. He has been through so much. He and the Missus! Have pity!”
    “Pity on the rich? Me?” Grimsby lets out a horrible giggle.
    “He loves her. He loved the other one too!”
    Loves her? The other one too?
    “I ain’t ’ere on a mission of charity or to ’ear the sob stories of the privileged. Now you do as you is told or your master’s secret will be public knowledge.”
    “Leave this house immediately!”
    Sherlock hears a struggle and the woman begins to scream. He also hears a garbled sound, the pitiable cry of a teenage girl, terrified but wordless.
    Holmes springs into action. He darts out of the vestibule and into the parlor. He sees the woman and Grimsby grappling with each other. He attacks the rascal from behind, gripping him in a lock that drives his forearms down and against his hips, and pulls him away from woman, releasing her. But Sherlock doesn’t stop at that. He is incensed. Locking Grimsby so tightly that he almost cracks his ribs, he effects a Bellitsu move, placing his right foot in front of his opponent’s, twisting him violently and sending him sailing backward over his own upper thigh and hips. The startled little man lets out a cry as he crashes down onto his head and shoulders in the parlor and rolls all the way into the tiny back kitchen. Holmes is at him in a flash. Grimsby leaps to his feet, his little hands balled in fists. The woman lets out a scream. As Sherlock nears his enemy, he sees that the girl in the wheelchair is right there, inches from the blackguard, near the top of the stairs to the cellar. Holmes wants to kill him now; failing that, he wants to maim him for life. A hatred for Grimsby and Malefactor and for the man who killed his mother and for everyone who brings evil and hatred and injustice into the world rises up in him. He hates the fact that the poor girl sits in that wheelchair, disfigured and crippled. His eyes are on fire, the veins pop out on his neck and forehead, and he flushes red.
The time has come
.
    But the girl in the chair is in his line of vision, behindGrimsby. Her veil is off and she holds her hands in front of herself in shame, terrified, sobbing, her shoulders heaving. Those blue eyes peek out from between her fingers, catching sight of Sherlock. When their eyes meet, hers turn hopeful.
    He cannot hurt anyone in her presence, not even this devil. The woman sees Sherlock clearly now.
    “Why, you’re the dustman!” she says.
    But Holmes is glaring at Grimsby.
    “Villain!” he cries.
    “ ’Ow did you find this place ’olmes? You is an arse, but you ain’t without wits. I –”
    “Out from here, you wretch! Now!”
    “It won’t matter. I will return!”
    “Not on my watch!”
    “You can’t make me, ’olmes.”
    “No, but Malefactor can.”
    Grimsby goes silent. Sherlock grins.
    “He won’t like this, will he? He doesn’t know you are here. This is just your scam, isn’t it, you thug. Thought you’d shave a little more off the top without his knowledge, did you?”
    “What do I gain from working in the Treasury? It’s not enough.”
    “Can’t wait for the rewards, can you?”
    “They’re mostly ’is.”
    “You thought you could do this without anyone knowing, didn’t you? This is a tissue of lies and secrets. You thought you’d add one more and, because these folks don’t know what is
really
going on,