Death on a Pale Horse (41 page)

“Oh, doctor, doctor!”

Now there was laughter in that voice again, laughing at itself, laughter that was unhinged. Of course he judged me to be weaker than Holmes, and so aimed at me. He would break my nerve, frighten me to answer back, pleading for a chance to bargain, giving away our position. Then he would have us both. But I felt a sudden anger and determination. I accepted his challenge. Where was he? A brief luminance from Ruytingen across the waves lay upon the fog without piercing it. The wide surface of that cold sea was still and calm, except for the occasional wash of a wave against the listing wreck of the
Comtesse de Flandre
.

I heard him again as I followed Holmes round the side of the after-saloon. Now it was my friend's turn to be taunted.

“Have no fear, Mr. Holmes. As a man of honour, I do not take my opponent's life by an act of murder. I would not treat a beast of the jungle so. Stand your ground, both of you, and you shall both have your chance. Run like cowards and you must accept the consequences. Even you, my dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Would you prefer the readers of the obituaries and the penny papers to learn that, at the last, you had been a ninny, shot in the back running away?”

Despite the worst I had heard of him, I never expected this gibbering of the madhouse cell, for that was what it had become. The voice now seemed to echo from the starboard side and we were moving like ghosts towards the stern, under the port shelter of the after-saloon, keeping our backs to its wall. Then a fragment of deck planking snapped and splintered just beside my right foot. It was the impact of a shot at random from his silent pistol. He had moved round and was behind us suddenly. We continued to edge sideways towards the stern, presenting the smallest possible target. But in a moment we must leave the shelter of the saloon and come into the view of Moran's seamen by the winch. Holmes had instinctively drawn the Webley revolver, but it was useless to us now.

I had a mad idea that we could save ourselves by swimming for our lives. Without shoes and heavier outer clothing, we might dive from the rail and support ourselves if necessary on one of the floating planks. After a few strokes from the ship's side, the fog would close round us again. It could not be more than two hundred yards to the ropes that hung down the sides of the
Princesse Henriette
for survivors to clutch at. Could we do it? I could swim further than that as a schoolboy or at Battersea baths as a medical student. But this dark sea held a bitter chill, and its unknown currents might carry us away from safety.

Holmes seemed intent upon his own plan. With long supple fingers that Paganini or Joachim might have envied, he was silently easing back the sliding door at this side of the saloon. There was no sound of our adversary, no derisive voice. Moran might be six feet away—or sixty. Had he come and gone? No. I felt sure he was still behind us. Keeping our heads down, we crossed the curtained saloon in darkness, its curtains still closed, and came out on the starboard side. Holmes was evidently making a circuit in order to follow our route again and then take him in the rear.

Coming out through that opposite door into the enveloping mist once more, we felt our way forward, our backs to the wall of the saloon again. We were coming to the point at which he had seemed to be standing when we first heard his voice. With luck, he was still following us towards the stern and we might track him unseen. Once in view, a single bullet would do the job. That, of course, was the moment when we might dive from the rails and save ourselves from the rest of his crew. But as I calculated our chances, my foot caught some object in the darkness and I almost overbalanced. It felt like a fallen log. I put my hand down and felt a human leg, then a jacket, and then the features of a face. The Ruytingen light touched the surface of the sea for an instant. In its brief reflection I saw the dead man's face. It was Lieutenant Cabell.

If I felt fear of any kind, it was not for a dead body. I had seen far too many for that. Rather, it came from the knowledge that something had gone wrong with all our plans. We were in the trap. Holmes had counted on our adversaries watching us every minute, reading our messages, decoding our cipher. He had counted on them believing that he would be on board the ship, no matter what he said. Had his judgment failed him now in the matter of the young lieutenant?

A whisper came at my ear, so quiet that it might have been Holmes. It was amiable, intimate, and soothing, coming from behind me:

“You would have it so, doctor, would you not? And, you see, it has come to this. You stand between Mr. Holmes and myself. He cannot shoot me unless he shoots you first, which I think he will not do. And he knows that if he does not lay his weapon down upon the deck this minute, then I—with more regret than I can ever describe—must shoot you here and now. And then, with more reluctance than I have felt in killing the noblest beast, I must shoot him.”

I cried out at once, “Do as you must, Holmes!”

The moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew what a fool I had been. I meant him to understand that he must ignore me and take Moran to the land of shadows at all costs. Had I said, “Shoot him!” that would have done it. But it seemed as if “Do as you must” meant “Do as he tells you.” To my dismay, Holmes laid my revolver on the deck and addressed our adversary.

“My congratulations, colonel. Your reputation as a hunter goes before you. It was remiss of me not to foresee that you might use Lieutenant Cabell's body as a bait to catch your prey. Sooner or later, even in this fog, we should stumble upon the poor fellow quite literally. The snare at which you waited would spring and you would have us.”

Moran ignored the compliment. He came into view now, almost bear-like in his heavy military coat. He motioned us on with the pistol in his hand.

“A little further forward, if you please, gentlemen. Under the light.”

In a situation so desperate and with the mind racing, there was nothing for it but to obey, moving an inch at a time and keeping one's nerve. With the heavy-looking weapon of Von Herder in his hand, Moran followed us, scooping up my revolver from the deck before I could prevent him.

Someone had now drawn back the curtains of the after-saloon, where the broken windows faced the ship's funnels, and a lamp had been lit. The space where we had first stood was hazily lit by the light from the interior. Holmes turned to face our enemy so that we stood with our backs to this illumination. Moran laughed, as if to assure us that such a position would not inconvenience him in the least.

Without looking down, he broke open the Webley and shook the six cartridges out. He dropped them into his pockets. Then, as if thinking better of this, he drew one back out and inserted it in the gun, spun the chambers, and closed the gun. It was as if he was performing some trick for our benefit.

With the revolver in his right hand, he raised his left and pulled the trigger of Von Herder's pistol. With less sound than a cork popping, the weapon discharged and I ducked my head as the remaining window behind us shattered. What was his game? For it was a game, a sport for an asylum of the criminally insane. Why not kill us then and there?

“You do not think well of me, Mr. Holmes?”

As coolly as if he was declining a second slice of cake at a tea party, Holmes replied. “I cannot say that I often think of you at all, Colonel Moran.”

Moran chuckled. “You know that is not true, sir! I should be offended if it were. But however badly you may view me, I am a sportsman. I do not kill in cold blood—not even you. I might shoot you both now. But that is not my way with a man of your calibre, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, even though you have caused me some considerable difficulties. You deserve a better end.”

Mad as a hatter!

“Indeed?” Again, Holmes made the word sound like an expression of polite boredom.

“We must have this thing over between us, Mr. Holmes. The world cannot any longer contain us both. That is all. But you shall have a sporting chance.”

This time there was no reply, and Moran was left to continue his own demented monologue.

“There are two guns, you see? Mine and the doctor's. We shall duel at this distance. At so short a range, we may expect that the contest will soon be decisive. They tell me you are an opponent worth challenging to a match at firearms, Mr. Holmes. Very well. You are unfamiliar with the Von Herder pistol, I daresay, but no matter. You are very familiar with your friend's Webley revolver. Excellent. You shall have his revolver and this one bullet. And you shall fire first. You may check that the chamber brings the cartridge to the top in readiness. I have a certain knack of dodging bullets, but you will agree that if you miss me at this distance, you deserve neither your reputation nor your life. In that case, I shall have my turn after yours. Is that not fair?”

There must be a trick in this, though I could not yet see what it was. I knew that he intended to kill us both, but this game would also serve some peculiar vanity of his own.

“And in either event,” Holmes inquired politely, “what is to become of my colleague?”

Moran gave another of his light-hearted chuckles.

“If you succeed, his difficulties are resolved. If not, then I fear we shall have to see what we shall see.”

“And if I should refuse.…”

“You would be a far more stupid man than the world takes you for, Mr. Holmes! Now, do not disappoint me! You may miss me, of course. But even then, I may forego my right of reply. I am a hunter, sir, and more than half my pleasure is the thrill of the risk. I propose to be your executioner. But, as they used to say in the days of steel, the delight of an execution is not in the slovenly butchering of a man but in cutting the head from the shoulders with a single sword-stroke and leaving it standing in its place. Is that not so? Come, now.”

Holding the Webley by its muzzle, he laid it on the deck and then with his foot sent it scudding across to the toecaps of Sherlock Holmes.

I measured the distance between us. I could never reach him before he fired at me. But the moment Moran raised his gun to take aim at Holmes, I would try to charge him down as I had charged many an opposing forward on the rugby ground at Blackheath in my student days. He might still shoot us both. But he must first turn and shoot at me before I could reach him. That would give Holmes just a moment's chance to spring and finish what I had started. It was a slim chance, but it was the only one.

The colonel's laughter seemed higher-pitched now, as he said “Come!”

Holmes was holding the Webley down, at arm's length, the safety catch released, the chamber carefully positioned. He began to raise it, his arm coming higher like a clock hand until it was horizontal. I watched for the forefinger to tighten on the trigger. But to my surprise, his arm kept rising. He would never hit Moran now! Higher and higher went the arm, until the gun was pointing at the sky. Then I could see that Moran was prepared to shoot first until Holmes called out, “Major Putney-Wilson, if you please!”

Moran would not have been human had he not paused to see what this meant. In a moment of surprise, he looked like a man who feels he has been harpooned. A second later there was a roar from the muzzle of the skyward-pointing Webley and a flash of fire. Holmes was not looking at Moran, but somewhere just beyond him. The colonel's eyes, which had been flicking here and there, now went still and round as marbles. With his pistol covering Holmes, Colonel Moran half-turned and saw a figure like a ghost in the vapour. The man took shape, tall and dishevelled, a cotton cap on his head, his body cased in a grimy boiler-suit, his face immaculately blackened by soot, the eyes and lips alone visible. In his hand was the silver Laroux pistolet of Sherlock Holmes.

In that same second, Holmes leapt at his enemy. The length of his reach was always extraordinary, but never more so than in this flying leap. His feet never touched the ground until the moment of impact. He was on Moran before the colonel could raise his gun. Moran was a ferocious hunter, but his skill was with his gun rather than with his fists—and with his fists rather than in his arms. Their collision enabled Holmes to knock aside the Von Herder pistol.

Each recoiled from the impact. Moran at once tried to snatch Holmes round the neck and double him over, imprisoning him in the traditional English wrestling grip of “chancery.” But when he closed his arm round his opponent's neck, it had apparently dissolved into air. Holmes had dived and caught Moran round the waist, tossing him over his shoulder like a sack of coals. The colonel's teeth were brought together by the shock with a force that might have broken his jaw.

In a second more, Holmes threw him down on his back, knocking out his breath and catching him by the feet. What followed was more like a ballet than a prize-fight. The strength in Holmes's hands was daunting, as anyone would know who had watched him casually bend straight Dr. Roylott's distorted iron poker. From a spell of education in Germany, he was schooled in boxing and fencing as well as in the less common art of singlestick. In some forms of combat, Moran might have been his superior. But Holmes had waited for his chosen time and his chosen place. Despite his bulk, Moran seemed helpless as Holmes, with footwork quicker and more intricate than a dancer's, swung him by the feet in circle after circle at increasing speed. The art of it was to make the helpless victim gain velocity until he appeared to contribute to his own destruction.

At a precise moment, Sherlock Holmes released him and sent him hurtling into what I believe is called a “Tipperary swing.” The colonel went head-first into the steel plating of the saloon. What damage was done to him I do not care to speculate, but it was surely the end of Rawdon Moran. So neatly had Holmes despatched him that the senseless body slid down and through the opening in the deck where the engine-room skylight had once been. The colonel fell like Satan into the darkness below, between the motionless pistons of the ship's engines. Knocked side to side, he crashed on to the barrel-shape of the steel condenser below them. I cannot tell at what point he was dead, but the white paintwork of the condenser showed him face down, head and hair washing to and fro in the rising flood. He was then as dead as any man had ever been.