Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [57]
Sherlock braced himself, and reached out for the strut again. The metal seared against his palm but he endured it, pulling hard, scrabbling with knees and feet, dragging himself under the engine part and away from Grivens. He suddenly sensed space above him, and climbed shakily to his feet. His hand throbbed, but he was in a different part of the engine room. Another alley led away from him, the walls formed by an interlocking series of pipes. He ran down it, looking for a ladder or a door.
Something went clang behind him. He turned, to find Grivens standing at the other end of the metal-walled alley. He’d just hit his spanner against a metal stanchion.
‘All right, kid. End of the line. You’ve had a good run, but it’s time to call it a day. Let old Grivens just put you out of your misery, yes?’
‘Is it too late for that deal you mentioned?’ Sherlock prevaricated.
Grivens smiled. ‘Far too late,’ he said. ‘Sad to say, I’m a man of my word. I shook hands on a deal, and I have to see it through. Couldn’t really break my contract now, could I? What kind of man would that make me?’
‘So it was just words.’
He nodded. ‘Just words. There was always a chance you’d believe them and come out of your own accord, but I didn’t have much faith.’
He began to walk forward, swinging the spanner.
Sherlock looked around frantically for something he could use to fight with. It looked like fighting was his only option now.
Clang! The spanner hit an iron pipe, sending shock waves reverberating around the engine room.
‘Just look at me,’ Grivens said in a calm, low voice. ‘Just look at me, kid. Look me in the eye. Don’t look for a means of escape. Accept the inevitable, yes?’
Sherlock felt the calmness of the voice, the reasonableness of the words and the heat of the engine room lulling him into a trance. He shook his head abruptly. He couldn’t let himself be hypnotized by the steward.
He glanced from side to side desperately. Something caught his eye – something leaning against a ladder. A shovel! One of the stokers must have left it there at the end of their shift. Its handle was black with coal dust and its blade was partly melted, as if it had been pushed by accident too far into the flames when it was shovelling coal. Sherlock reached out and grabbed it, holding it across his body with the blade up by his face.
‘So the cur’s got some spirit in him, yes?’ Grivens’s face was set into a grim mask. ‘Just means I have to work a bit harder for my cash.’
He lunged forward and lashed out with the spanner, trying to catch the side of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock ducked back, and the spanner hit the side of an iron tube. Sparks flew across the room. Sherlock felt them burn his face. He brushed at his hair in case any of them had caught in it.
Grivens snarled, and pulled the spanner back. Raising it over his head, he brought it crashing down towards Sherlock’s scalp.
Sherlock blocked the blow clumsily with his shovel. The spanner hit the wooden shaft at its halfway point and dented it, nearly knocking Sherlock to his knees. The vibration transferring from the shovel felt like it might tear his arms from their sockets. He managed to bring the shovel around and he caught Grivens’s kneecap with the blade. Grivens screamed and staggered back, mouth open in an ‘O’ of disbelief.
‘You little beggar!’ he cursed. Swinging the spanner like a club he lunged at Sherlock again.
Sherlock brought the blade of the shovel up to meet the spanner. The two connected with a sound like the crack of doom. Grivens bounced backwards, the spanner whirling away from him and disappearing into the darkness of the engine room. Sherlock’s suddenly nerveless fingers dropped the shovel on the floor.
Grivens was standing in a half-crouch, cradling his right elbow in his left hand. His face was twisted into an animalistic snarl.
Sherlock turned and ran.
The alley ended in another junction, with more alleys heading left and right. Sherlock took the right-hand one and tore along it, stopping only when he came to a ladder leading upward. He glanced back over