Becoming Holmes by Shane Peacock Page A

you’d be safe.”
    “I is.”
    “Not now.”
    “You wouldn’t tell ’im.”
    “I would!”
    “But ’e’s your enemy, ’olmes!”
    “Enemies can be used, especially to destroy other fiends!”
    The woman steps forward, taking the veil from the kitchen table, about to put it over the young one’s face. “What are you two talking about? This poor girl is none of your business! You must leave! Both of you!” The invalid in the wheelchair is smiling up at Holmes.
    “You put his enterprise in danger, Grimsby,” says Sherlock, ignoring the woman. “When I tell him, he will be VERY angry.”
    Grimsby’s face looks as if it might explode. His hatred for Sherlock Holmes rises within him. He stands there boiling, thinking about how his master opposes the brilliant half-Jew but somehow still respects him, much more than he respects his own lieutenant. Now, the half-breed is threatening to destroy even his opportunity at the Treasury, his chance of being someone special in Malefactor’s eyes, not to mention his own little blackmailing scheme.
    “I ’ate you, Sherlock ’olmes!” he cries. He turns and sees the cripple. Tears burst from his eyes like water released from a dam. “Useless freak!” he cries. It is hard to know if he means her or himself, but as he speaks he rears back and kicks the wheelchair as hard as he can. It tips over and falls with a crash to the top of the cellar stairs, and keeps rolling from theforce of Grimsby’s blow, rocking over onto the first step, and picking up momentum as it descends, thudding and slamming with great violence down the stairs, landing on its side, then its wheels, and then, at the bottom … on the invalid’s huge, deformed skull. The woman shrieks. “Angela!!!” She runs to the top step. Sherlock and Grimsby stand where they are, their mouths wide open. The girl has landed on the hard cellar floor, and blood is running from her ears. Her neck is twisted at a grotesque angle. She isn’t breathing.
    The woman flies down to her. “Angela? Angela!!”
    The girl’s blue eyes are wide open. They stare up at Sherlock Holmes, unblinking and still.
    “She’s DEAD!” cries the woman, gasping and bringing her hands to her mouth.
    Grimsby runs. In an instant he is out the door and down the street. Holmes wants to pursue him, tear him limb from limb. Their street fights were one-sided at first, but became closer affairs, and Holmes, with another year of lethal Bellitsu behind him, knows what he can do now. He can do the little one grievous harm.
    But Sherlock can’t run away. Not from this house. They need him. He forces his rubbery legs to move down the stairs. The woman turns, spits in his face and shoves him away.
    “I was trying … to help,” he pleads.
    “You
killed
her, you and that little beast! Our beauty is dead! Just like Gabriella! What will Sir Ramsay say? It will break him!”
    What will Lady Stonefield say? Will this break her too?
    Sherlock wipes the spittle from his face.
    The woman sobs for a while and he kneels near them, feeling helpless. “I am … sorry,” she finally says to him through her tears. “It wasn’t you. You
were
trying to help. It was that other little man, that horrible one.” She sobs again. “I am sorry.” She holds the big, broken head in her arms, the blood running onto her sleeve. “Oh, so sorry.”
    Sherlock can’t believe that in her terrible grief she is able to take back her angry words, that she has concern for him. She is a good person, indeed.
    He ascends the stairs. There is nothing else he can do here. His target is out there, running away.
    After him!
    “Who are you, really?” asks the woman.
    Sherlock looks down at her. “A friend,” he says quietly. Then he tears out the door.

    But out on the street there is no sign of the criminal, not even in the distance. Holmes races to his hansom cab. It is gone. Grimsby has bribed the driver. Sherlock will never catch him.
    He must walk back to