Chapter Fourteen
Watson
With an air of shamed resignation, Holmes crossed the room and ran his hands along the faded, peeling paper near the floor beneath the window, and continued until he reached a place near the corner where he grabbed part of the paper. He pulled on it. The paper peeled away easily, as though this had happened to it before, revealing what appeared to be a largish jewelry box secreted between the inside and outside walls. My friend carefully took it out, brushed some of the dust off and opened it, revealing—
Nothing. The box was empty!
Holmes gasped audibly. Cauldwell swore.
"I thought you knew what you were doing!" exclaimed Cauldwell through gritted teeth.
"I—I don't…I thought I did too," Holmes muttered, glancing up at Cauldwell. My friend blanched. I could not see Cauldwell's face, as he was standing behind me, but judging by my friend's reaction, I have no doubt it was terrifying to behold.
Without warning, a flash of silver entered my vision and fled as quickly as it came, leaving behind a sudden flash of pain and a warm, sticky substance on my right cheek.
"Watson!" Holmes cried, rushing toward me, his eyes more openly fearful than they had been all evening.
"Find the papers, or next time it will be his throat," came Cauldwell's dangerously calm voice from behind me. "Find them. Find them now!"
I hardly noticed the stinging of my bleeding cheek, so focused was I upon my friend. He swallowed, his gaze moving from Cauldwell, to me—I gave him the most reassuring look I could muster—to the box, to the wall, and suddenly back to the box. He lifted it to eye level and stared intently at the outside, then lowered it and looked inside it, giving a sudden hysterical laugh of relief in a far higher pitch that was normal for him.
"It's a false bottom!" he exclaimed, and turned the box upside down. He shook it, but the false bottom did not budge. My friend attempted to pry it out with his fingernails, but was still unsuccessful.
I felt something cold brush against my shoulder; Cauldwell was wiping the blade of the knife on my waistcoat. I flinched in surprise, disgust, and—yes, I admit it—fear. "Come here and I'll pry it out," said Cauldwell, and he stepped forward with the knife. Holmes stepped toward Cauldwell, and held the box out to him. Cauldwell quickly managed to pry out the bottom with the aid of the knife, revealing several leaves of paper folded into each other and tied tightly together with a length of brown twine. These Holmes took out, and placed in Cauldwell's empty hand.
"Thank you," said Cauldwell in a very serious businesslike tone. "Now, I'm sure you are both wondering why I would go to such lengths to retrieve a few sheets of paper containing information valuable to the late Professor Moriarty." He paused, waiting for an affirmation. Holmes and I nodded slowly. "You see, these papers are more than they seem to be. They will soon be the key to achieving more power than I ever could have dreamed of possessing before I realised the true potential of the information contained within them. Even before Moriarty's death, I had been slowly planning my own rise to power in his ranks. Many of the others were as well, I know, but none of them had my patience, tenacity, or my brilliance. I do not think he suspected for a moment that I was anything but loyal. All the while I was plotting his downfall, and how I could put myself into a position to replace him, and wield even greater power and influence.
As Cauldwell spoke, he paced back in forth before us, as though lecturing students.
"I learned that you were plotting his downfall too, Mr. Holmes, and Moriarty had heard of your reputation as a brilliant detective. When I did some of my own research, I realised that you had a sister, and soon decided to use her to my advantage, as you discovered later. Little did I know that all the while that sneaking girl was on to me the entire time. In the end I gained little from her, and to top it all off, she stole these papers from me. Moriarty had entrusted them to me for safekeeping. I was forced to kill her when she would not tell me where they were, and threatened to turn me in to the police for all the crimes for which she had gathered proof of my involvement." He paused for a moment. Holmes and I remained silent, and he went on.
"After this, I fled the country and stayed in America for some time, where I first made my acquaintance with Mr. Crawford, whom you have both met. I heard of your defeat of Moriarty, and then of your own death, Mr. Holmes. I longed to return to England in hopes of picking up where Moriarty had left off. To my dismay, your trial of a century, as it was referred to by many, had taken care of nearly all of Moriarty's best men. But then I remembered these papers, and realised that perhaps there was something there that could help me reform Moriarty's great empire. Many things have hindered my being able to find it, primarily the lack of funds to return to England from America in the first place, though Crawford's inheritance allowed me to return several weeks ago.
"So I waited for an opportunity, and suddenly you shocked the world by revealing that you did not in fact perish at the Reichenbach Falls, but were still alive. I knew I could use you to get to the papers, once I was back in England. And I was reasonably certain that using the Doctor would be the most effective way of convincing you to help me. And so it was. Now, I believe, you know all. Or all that I am willing to tell you, at any rate," he amended with a small satisfied smile.
Cauldwell paused, letting it all sink in for a moment or two, before he began to speak again. "Now, we all know that I do not take unnecessary risks, and it is rapidly becoming apparent to me that you two are both more liabilities than assets to me. Now that I have these papers, I no longer need either of you, but you know too much for me to allow you to walk free."
"You're going to kill us," said Holmes flatly.
Cauldwell smiled at him, his dark eyes glinting with malice. "Excellent deduction, Mr. Holmes," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I can see now why the Doctor holds you in such high esteem."
I felt a surge of terror and fury at this man welling up within me, supplemented by a rush of adrenaline. We were going to die, unless one or both of us did some very quick thinking, and judging by my friend's dead-looking eyes and shaking hands, he would not be the one to do so. I swallowed hard. Escaping impossible situations was Holmes's area of expertise, not mine.
Which meant that I needed to think like him. Logically.
What were our assets? Holmes and I were both still physically capable, aside from my left arm, there were two of us and one of Cauldwell, who did not appear to be nearly as physically fit as my friend. Liabilities? Cauldwell had three guns, a knife, the papers that Holmes's late sister had died to gain, and six henchmen. The odds were not in our favour.
Cauldwell's voice broke into my whirling thoughts. "Dr. Watson, have you any last words?"
My mind went blank. I looked at Holmes standing beside me, his eyes wide and openly terrified. Was this really how it was going to end?
"No?" said Cauldwell, cocking an eyebrow. "How very unfortunate. Based on what I've heard, you can be quite eloquent when you put your mind to it." He levelled the knife at my chest. "Goodbye, Doctor Watson."
Instinct screamed at me to move, to run, to stay alive, but my legs refused to function and instead I stayed rooted to the spot, as firmly as if I had been nailed there.
We were going to die.
Holmes
I watched in horror as Cauldwell pointed the knife at Watson's chest. I could not watch it happen. I could not allow it to happen.
Acting on sheer instinct rather than logic or reason, I sprang between Watson and Cauldwell, tackling Cauldwell to the floor. I felt a blinding flash of pain and warm blood on my right shoulder as we fell, Cauldwell hitting his head on the desk with a loud thud and falling limply to the floor, I on top of him. I cried out in pain—the knife was stuck in my shoulder and my shirt and jacket were quickly becoming soaked in blood.
"Holmes!" I heard Watson exclaim, rushing to my side as I struggled into a kneeling position, clutching my shoulder in agony.
"Watson," I said with an effort, as tears began to stream down my cheeks and my shoulder seared with pain. "Watson, it's stuck."
"Yes, I see that. Don't try to talk now, my dear fellow. I'm going to have to take it out. Here, let's get your back to this wall," he said in his best soothing doctor voice, half leading and half dragging me as I scooted across the few feet between myself and the wall next to the desk, my vision blurring from more than tears as I did so.
I leaned gingerly against the wall, biting my lips stop myself from screaming out in pain. Watson gently moved my trembling, blood-covered hands away from my injured shoulder. "Hold still," he said. I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw and felt Watson carefully pull the knife out of my shoulder. I cried out again.
"There. It's out now," he said. "Now I'm going to put some pressure on the shoulder to staunch the bleeding, all right?"
I nodded, still keeping my eyes squeezed tightly shut and vaguely wondering why none of Cauldwell's henchmen were coming to see what all the commotion up here was about. But they probably weren't surprised to hear pain-filled cries, I supposed. The thought made me feel even more ill than I already did.
A sudden thought struck me and my eyes flew open. "Cauldwell…is he…?"
Watson shook his head, tearing off a strip of his shirt. "I don't know. I'm going to put some pressure on your shoulder now."
I nodded, clenching my jaw once more, not trusting myself to speak. As Watson began to apply pressure to the injury, my shoulder seared with unbearable pain, and the room and his anxious face blurred and a blackness began to encroach around the edges of my field of vision. It took a moment to register that the tortured moan I heard had escaped from my own lips.
As much as I wanted the pain to stop, I forced myself to stay conscious; I could not afford to leave Watson to try to escape and carry me with him, and I knew he would never leave me.
I gritted my teeth as he wrapped strips of his shirt and mine around my injury, slowly forming a makeshift bandage and tourniquet. My arm went numb as he did so, but thankfully this dulled the pain.
After my medical friend completed this task, he strode across the room to Cauldwell's side, and checked for a pulse.
"He's alive," said Watson. "We need to get out of here." His brow furrowed as he attempted to determine how this was to be accomplished. My friend rose to his feet, and crossed to boarded window. He shook his head, muttering, "That's no good—it would take all night to saw through these boards with a knife, and no doubt it's a sheer drop to the pavement anyway." He turned back towards me. "Our only choice is to take on the two guards outside the door and improvise from there." He picked up my pistol from the desk and reloaded it. "Do you think you can stand?"
I nodded, even though I was not at all sure that I could.
"Good." He nodded grimly, his jaw set, and reloaded his own revolver, then removed Cauldwell's from his pocket and put it in his own, along with the papers from the wall. With a grimace, I put my left hand behind me and attempted to push myself into a straighter sitting position. The attempt was largely unsuccessful and resulted in an embarrassing whimper, which immediately arrested Watson's attention and he rushed to my side. Though my eyes were squeezed tightly shut, I could feel his keen hazel eyes fixed on my face.
"Don't try to get up by yourself; I'll help you in a minute." He was fighting to remain calm, I could see it, but his voice betrayed his anxiousness.
I nodded, my head swimming, and after several seconds I once again forced open my eyes. Watson was standing before me, holding at arm's length Cauldwell's knife, now dark with blood. My blood. And possibly some of Watson's as well, I thought glancing at the dark blood drying on the side of my friend's cheek and jaw.
"What shall we do with this, I wonder?" he muttered, turning it over in his hands.
Slit that monster's throat with it, I thought grimly, but said nothing aloud. Watson frowned, scanning the room, until his eyes stopped at a point on the opposite wall, and he walked towards it. I followed his gaze, and saw that he was walking to the missing section of the wall where the papers had been hidden. There was just enough room for the dagger to fit inside. Watson carefully smoothed the paper back over it, then returned to the desk and placed the jewelry box in one of the drawers.
"Hopefully he'll think we took the knife with us and not bother to search for it," Watson said quietly. "I think we're going to have to leave the lantern behind," he said, gesturing toward the dark lantern I had brought with us. "It's too bulky and heavy to bring along." I nodded in agreement.
He snatched up my coat from the floor next to the desk and knelt down beside me. "I'm going to help you put on your coat. Even with your right arm completely inside the coat, I think you are thin enough that we should be able to button most of the buttons." I nodded, and he helped me lean forward and slide my left arm into the sleeve. He pulled it gently but securely around my shoulders, and quickly buttoned it with a slight bit of assistance on my part; I was not completely invalided.
After donning his own coat, he knelt beside me and placed my left arm around his shoulders and helped me to my feet. My shoulder throbbed and my head swam, and I was afraid for a moment that I might faint again, but I thankfully remained conscious. After a second or two I noticed that Watson was supporting over half of my weight and I struggled to move some of my weight back to my own legs, weak though I felt. A wave of nausea coursed through me and I fought the urge to vomit as the pain in my shoulder seared with every move I made.
Watson picked up my pistol from the desk. "Do you think you can aim well enough left-handed to want to carry this?" he asked.
"Of course," I said through clenched teeth, and he placed it into my hand. I was starting to get used to the slightly numbed throbbing in my shoulder, but the room seemed to be getting chillier and my head lighter.
My Boswell closed the shade on Cauldwell's dark lantern, plunging the room into pitch darkness.
"How are we going to do this?" I managed to ask through still-clenched teeth.
"Any way we can," he replied. Despite the darkness of that room, I caught a glimpse of the man my Watson had been as an army surgeon during the Afghan campaign: a man who while doing his duty as a doctor could receive Jezail bullets in both his shoulder and his leg, and still survive the tragic battle of Maiwand, undoubtedly saving the lives of dozens of soldiers along the way.
"Lead the charge then, General," I replied.
He spared my army jargon a small twitch of a smile, and then did just that.