Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [74]
The woman – Bill’s companion – screamed as well, a high, piercing shriek that cut the air like a knife.
The other four men looked at each other in disbelief, then moved forward and reached out their grimy hands for Sherlock. Every detail was etched into Sherlock’s mind: the dirt beneath their nails, the hairs on the backs of their hands, the blood pooling on the ground, the shriek of the woman and the scream of Denny melding into one continuous whistle of pain. The world seemed to slow to a halt, freeze, and then shatter into pieces around him. He turned to the woman, his mouth dry. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
Then he was running again. Two of the men followed, leaving Denny behind, collapsed on the cobbles beside Bill. The woman just stood there, looking down at them both, her scream gradually fading into choking sobs.
Turning a corner, Sherlock saw a massive domed building ahead of him. It looked entirely out of place in the middle of a cleared area of ground which had been planted with bushes and trees. Several roads – wide roads, not alleys – led away from it, and there was a constant bustle of people and horses swarming around outside. Beyond it Sherlock could see a stone wall and, further away, the churning grey surface of the Thames.
Sherlock ran towards it. Where there were people, there was likely to be safety.
Sprinting, he swerved past well-dressed men and women and ducked beneath the shafts of a carriage, heading all the time for the building. As it grew closer he could see that it was decorated with statues and tiled mosaics. A large entrance loomed up ahead of him, and he diverted his course slightly to head straight for it. Behind him, curses and shouts indicated that his pursuers hadn’t given up.
The entrance led into a circular hall, lit by the sun shining through a myriad of coloured glass windows in the domed ceiling. The light gave a clownish, harlequin air to the place. In the centre of the building was a hole ringed by a balcony. People were lined up along the balcony, gazing down at something. Over to one side, a wide stairway spiralled round the edge of the pit, into the depths of the earth.
Sherlock dashed across, pushing through the throng of people, and reached the top of the stairway. Turning, he glimpsed the two men shoving their way through the crowd. One of them was a bald man with deformed ears and nose, leading that small part of Sherlock’s brain that wasn’t frantically trying to work out ways of escape to think that he might have been a boxer. The other was painfully thin, with sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. They were obviously set on catching him, no matter what. Perhaps before he had broken Denny’s jaw they might have given up, but they were driven by a purpose now. One of them had been humiliated, and so Sherlock would have to pay.
He turned, and started down the staircase.
The stairs spiralled around the sides of a tremendous shaft, levelling out every now and then on a balcony but then continuing down into the abyss. A smell rose up out of the shaft: a stench that combined damp, rot and mould into a single foetid odour that made his nose tingle and his eyes water. Sherlock’s steps fell into a repetitive routine as he pounded round the sides of the cylindrical shaft. He had no idea what was at the bottom, but a single glance across the shaft told him what would await him at the top. Two of Baron Maupertuis’s men were racing down the steps towards him.
He sped up. Whatever was at the bottom of the shaft couldn’t be as bad as the certain and probably slow death that was chasing him.
He seemed to have spent much of the past few days running or fighting, and even as his feet clattered against the stone steps and his hand burned as it scraped against the banister there was a part of his mind that wondered frantically what exactly Baron