Good Night, Mr. Holmes Read Online Free PDF Page A

little Lucy had survived a wagon-train attack. Then the Mormons found ’em both and sheltered ’em on the terms that they join their damnable church. John raised Lucy like she was his own. He followed their strange ways—though he never took a wife, much less several; he’d never subject Lucy to that polygamy notion.”
    “Polygamy?” I repeated faintly, as Jefferson Hope spoke on.
    “Lucy grew up an heiress, for John Ferrier was a shrewd fellow and those folk prize worldly success. I came into the cursed wilderness on business and stayed to love Lucy, as she loved me. But Stangerson and Drebber wanted Ferrier’s wealth and Drebber wanted my Lucy and they took both while I was away. They killed old John and made my Lucy—I won’t call it ‘marry,’ though there was some shameful ceremony—made her live with Drebber.”
    Jefferson Hope’s blood-shot eyes narrowed to wolfish slits. “I tracked them for twenty-one years through the desert and the vast, paved wastes of the great cities of North America and Europe. They knew it, too, and ran like sheep. And then—”
    I quailed, seeing in that relentless face a likeness to the very hound of heaven itself. Irene leaned toward the sick man, her breath agitating the veil that swathed her face.
    “Had they killed your Lucy, too?”
    “Might as well have. With John dead, and me unable to rescue her—the whole enclave was tracking me—she... faded away; died a few months after undergoing God knows what.” His face contorted, then relaxed abruptly. “Lucy was with me in spirit, every step of the way, just days ago when Enoch Drebber, whom I’d been tracking in my cab, hailed me. I drove him to an empty house on the Brixton Road and confronted him with his sins. God knows it was for Lucy’s sweet sake I did it. And would again.”
    “What exactly did you do, Mr. Hope?” Irene asked coolly.
    His eyes opened to reassess her. He chuckled, the wretch actually chuckled. “You’ve a bit of what limeys call pluck yourself, Miss, don’t you? Nervy, to minister to a murderer, and a dying one at that.”
    My gasp cracked on the foggy twilight air like a distant whip, but neither heeded it. They seemed to be in clandestine consultation, Jefferson Hope and Irene Adler, as sinner to confessor. It was a bizarre scene that unfolded in that still, smoky byway. Even I could not tear my eyes from the drama, for all its grisly implications.
    “Might as well tell you,” the big man said at last, regarding only Irene. “Might be my last opportunity to spill it. I want a sympathetic soul somewhere to know that John and Lucy Ferrier didn’t die unavenged, no matter how tardily, not while Jefferson Hope lived.” The man started, pressing a hand to his right side. “The ring, see if it’s still there! Wouldn’t want to lose it again clambering down from the dickey. Almost gave it up in Brixton Road.”
    Irene investigated the indicated pocket and drew out a plain gold band tucked in a doily of crumpled newsprint. “Is this what worries you?”
    “Yes! Yes.That ring was placed on Lucy’s unwilling hand in a mockery of marriage, but it’s clean now. Washed in the blood of the wolf, you might say, if you were a religious sort of person.” Here, he cast me a sardonic look that quite sent shivers down my corset lacings.
    “Now I can die in peace,” he went on. “Not that I didn’t give ’em a fair chance, more than they ever gave Lucy or her dad. Had two sets of two pills, one dosed with a nasty poison, you see. That’s what I offered ’em. Choose a pill and let the Almighty decide who lives or dies. ‘Course, I hadn’t long to go anyway, not with the aneurysm eating up my heart. But I had to last long enough to make ’em pay and see their faces. And if I winked out, why at least I’d know I’d made ’em confront the death they brought to the ones I loved.”
    “But you didn’t die, and they did.” Irene sounded contemplative. “It was more of a chance than