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

cotton arms snag on the top of the lamp’s glass chimney. Controlling his breath, as if for fear of waking the guard, he shook and worked the loop of cloth gently until he saw it slide down the far side of the glass to encircle the lamp at its base.
    His remarkable hearing was tuned to every nuance in Crellin’s breathing. He knew that he must now draw the lamp toward him without rousing the sleeping warder. The Hesperus lamp had been constructed so that the oil and the wick sat in a smooth metal bowl that formed its base. Yet to drag smooth metal roughly toward him would cause a rasping on the tiled floor that might wake the sleeper.
    Crellin gulped air into his throat and Holmes stopped at once. He waited until the sound of the man’s breathing was regular again and then tilted the lamp a little by pulling on the cotton noose. Only the smooth and rounded edge of its metal base now touched the tiles as it ran in a series of three brief crescents, as if on the rim of a wheel. It made no more sound than the feet of a rat hurrying across the dark yard outside. Once only in the next ten minutes did Crellin shift against the table with another heaving breath.
    Holmes eased the lamp quietly toward him and still there was no further movement from his guard. Presently his fingers touched the warm metal of the lamp base. As he drew back to the darkness of his bed, he held in his hands a treasure greater than the wealth of kings.
    Without hesitation he carried the lamp silently into the little alcove with its basin and drain, where he turned down the wick as low as he dared without extinguishing the flame. Then he heard the movement of the metal cover on the spy hole and had just time to slip back and draw the blanket over him on the bed before a tunnel of watery light illuminated the cell. He thought that he had little more to fear from this hourly inspection. Two men in the corridor guarded the cell door that night. One was McIver. The other was either the brutal master-at-arms or one of his assistants. When two men performed such a duty, it was the weaker who was given the chore of an hourly inspection while the other slept. He had no doubt, in this case, that the weaker was McIver.
    In the faint light that illuminated the cell from the alcove, he moved toward the draw chain controlling the supply of gas to the fishtails on the far wall, just on the near side of Crellin’s chair. The chains were closer to him than the lamp had been, but higher on the wall. The ankle chain was too short for his purpose, but by turning his body sideways he could reach a point a foot from the wall and a foot short of the metal pull. With a quiet breath he flicked the cotton noose of the shirt at its full length until he caught the chain and started it swinging like a pendulum against the wall. Keeping the metal links free of the wall, he flicked it harder, so that it swung further away from him and came further back.
    The extent of its nearer swing was eight inches short of his stretched fingers, as he measured it by sight, then six inches as he flicked it again, then four. Four inches would doom him as surely as four miles. Then the thin metal links brushed his fingertips, but he lost them again. And then, as it came swinging back, he snatched with all the energy of his being and just held it. Now he had only to draw gently on the thin chain. A moment later, he heard the first whisper of escaping gas issuing from the double jet above Crellin’s head as he slept.
    The two fish tails on the nearer wall were more easily within his range, but it had been necessary to make sure of the more distant ones first. With a single flick of the cotton shirt he caught the swinging links. Silently he pulled at this chain controlling the burners behind the fishtails. The whisper of water-gas became a rush. Much was still in the hands of fate but now only one path lay ahead of him, for better or for worse. Stripping the rough canvas cover from the prison pillow,