Read Online The Execution of Sherlock Holmes by Donald Thomas - Free Book Online

nineteen feet long, by eight feet wide and seven feet high. One thousand and sixty-four cubic feet. Some of that capacity was taken up by furnishings and fittings, notably a solid three-foot-square stone table at the far end and the wooden bed. The total space remaining was about a thousand and fifty cubic feet. He had even estimated the capacity of the wooden chair, now removed beyond his reach for the night. It seemed designed for the death cell, its joints being carefully dovetailed, without a single nail that might be used as a key or the condemned man’s means of self-destruction.
    As for the fittings, the four fishtail gaslights, a pair on each of the long walls, were of the common type with a Sugg-Letherby’s No. 1 burner. Each of the four would be fed by ten cubic feet of gas an hour. A slight odour of spirit as they were lit had assured Sherlock Holmes that they were fed by that cheaper type of fuel known as water-gas, commonly used in public buildings. If released unlit, its high concentration of carbon monoxide would be enough to poison almost all the air in the cell by the end of sixty minutes. Those who breathed it might not be dead at the end of the hour, but they would never regain consciousness unaided. Yet even had his enemies thought Holmes capable of reaching the draw chains of the burners, they knew that he must be the first to die.
    Among the volumes frequently taken down from his Baker Street bookshelves by my friend were the varied works of Dr. Daniel Haldane of Edinburgh, including Haldane on Poisons . Newgate prison, like most such institutions, tendered for the cheapest sources of fuel. These included this old-fashioned water-gas piped from a mains supply. It had once been produced by the decomposition of water, now often replaced by the use of petroleum as its origin, which gave it that spirituous odour on lighting. Its economic brightness was caused by the high concentration of carbon monoxide. Its use was more easily and carefully regulated in old and ill-ventilated public buildings than in private homes. It was seldom supplied to private citizens because of a greater danger of explosion if it should be misused.
    It was the duty of the two guards in the corridor to shine a lamp through the spy hole of the cell door from time to time to make sure that all was well within. Holmes had noticed in the past night or two that they did this every half hour or so to begin with and then, as they took their chance to sleep, they seemed content to shine the beam on the prisoner’s bed at inter vals of an hour or more. He waited until one of the men outside had shone the lamp through the spy hole. It was past midnight and he judged that it would be the best part of an hour before they did that again.
    No man ever moved as silently and with such economy of movement as Sherlock Holmes. With no more sound than a shadow he stripped off his shirt and held it in one hand. In the other hand he carried the light steel ankle chain clear of the floor so that it made no more noise than a silk rope. At the limit of the chain he stared down at Crellin, several feet away. The man, now palefaced from drink, was sleeping so deeply that his breathing was scarcely audible. There was a sickly perspiration on his forehead and his mouth sagged open. Holmes knelt silently and then measured his length across the cold paving of the tiled floor, reaching his arms at full stretch toward the Hesperus lamp by Crellin’s chair. The bully heard no more sound than if a bird had glided overhead.
    My friend’s calculations were correct. The lamp stood about a foot beyond the tips of his fingers. Using the buttons of the shirt cuffs to link the arms together as a lasso, he held the garment by its tails and cast it like a frail noose. It hit the glass chimney silently but slithered down without effect. For the first time the measured and controlled beat of Sherlock Holmes’s heart began to quicken. He cast again and this time saw the