The House of Silk_ The New Sherlock Holmes Novel - Anthony Horowitz [27]
‘There was certainly something he was not telling us,’ I concurred.
‘Let us hope that he has not acted in some way so as to betray us. Mr Carstairs, please stand well back. It is unlikely that our target will attempt violence, but we have come here without preparation. Dr Watson’s trusty revolver is doubtless lying wrapped up in cloth in some drawer in Kensington and I, too, am unarmed. We must live on our wits. Come on!’
The three of us entered the hotel. A few steps led up to the front door which opened into a public hallway with no carpets, little light, and a small office to one side. An elderly man was sitting there, propped up in a wooden chair, half-asleep, but he started when he saw us. ‘God bless you, gentlemen,’ he quavered. ‘We can offer you good, single beds at five shillings a night—’
‘We are not here for accommodation,’ Holmes replied. ‘We are in pursuit of a man who has recently arrived from America. He has a livid scar on one cheek. It is a matter of the greatest urgency, and if you do not wish to land yourself in trouble with the law, you will tell us where he can be found.’
The Boots had no desire to be in trouble with anyone. ‘There is but one American here,’ he said. ‘You must be referring to Mr Harrison from New York. He has the room at the end of the corridor on this floor. He came in a while ago and I think he must be asleep as I haven’t heard a sound.’
‘The number of the room?’ Holmes demanded.
‘It’s number six.’
We set off at once, down a bare corridor with doors so close together that the rooms behind them must be little more than cupboards and gas-jets turned so low that we had almost to feel our way through the darkness. Number six was indeed at the end. Holmes raised his fist, meaning to knock, then stepped back, a single gasp escaping from his lips. I looked down and saw a streak of liquid, almost black in the half-light, curling out from beneath the door and forming a small pool against the skirting. I heard Carstairs give a cry and saw him recoiling, his hands covering his eyes. The Boots was watching us from the end of the corridor. It was as if he was expecting the horror that was about to unveil itself.
Holmes tried the door. It wouldn’t open. Without saying a word, he brought his shoulder up against it and the flimsy lock shattered. Leaving Carstairs in the corridor, the two of us went in and saw at once that the crime, which I had once considered trivial, had taken a turn for the worse. The window was open. The room was ransacked. And the man we had been pursuing was curled up with a knife in the side of his neck.
FIVE
Lestrade Takes Charge
Quite recently I saw George Lestrade again for what was to be the last time.
He had never fully recovered from the bullet wound he had sustained whilst investigating the bizarre murders that had become known in the popular press as the Clerkenwell Killings, although one of them had taken place in neighbouring Hoxton, and another turned out to be a suicide. By then, he had, of course, long retired from the police force, but he had the kindness to come and seek me out in the home into which I had just moved and we spent the afternoon together, reminiscing. My readers will hardly be surprised to learn that it was the subject of Sherlock Holmes that occupied much of our discourse, and I felt a need to apologise to Lestrade on two counts. First, I had never described him in perhaps the most glowing terms. The words ‘rat-faced’ and ‘ferret-like’ spring to mind. Well, as unkind as it was, it was at least accurate, for Lestrade himself had once joked that a capricious Mother Nature had given him the looks of a criminal rather than a police officer