Good Night, Mr. Holmes Read Online Free PDF

most would have offered such men.”
    “Died they did. Almost too quick. Drebber first and Stangerson at a holiday hotel later. But I lost the ring, that I’d taken off Lucy’s dead hand just afore they buried her in that empty desert. Luckily, some gent advertised in the papers that he had it, so I sent a pal of mine along to fetch it, figuring the authorities might be laying a trap for me.”
    “ ‘In Brixton Road this morning,’” Irene slowly read from the torn newsprint by the hansom lamps’ flickering light, “ ‘a plain gold wedding ring, found in the roadway between the White Hart Tavern and Holland Grove. ‘Apply Dr. Watson, 221-B, Baker Street, between eight and nine this evening.’ And was it a trap, Mr. Hope?”
    “Don’t know.” He straightened as if revived by his grim confession. “My confederate played he was a little old lady and was out of this Dr. Watson’s digs with the ring in a twinkle. He said some other gent was there, tall and lean with a damn sharp eye. Could have been a Scotland Yard ’tective. I’m a wanted man, Miss. You might get some reward for turning me in.”
    “Your story has been reward enough,” Irene answered thoughtfully. “Until now I’d thought men like you only existed in Western dime novels written in Philadelphia. Lucy Ferrier must have been a memorable woman that you would track her wrongdoers to the ends of the earth.”
    “My only regret,” he said, “is that my revenge will keep me from ever seeing her sweet face again, for I fear that your Deity, Miss”—here he regarded me again, to my dismay—”won’t want commerce with a murderer.”
    “But Lucy knows, Mr. Hope!” Irene leaned inward to press his bony wrist as if she were consoling a relation. “She sees and knows and rests better for it. Perhaps she will prevail upon Him to pardon you. After all, the chances were fifty-fifty that you would choose the poisoned tablet, not them.”
    “Luck or God’s own justice through my hand?” He nodded soberly. “I’ll find out soon enough, I reckon.” His paling features shifted as he glanced at me. “The fit is past, Miss. If you’re not of a mind to call the coppers, I’ll be going.” In proof of his recovered health, he lumbered upright.
    Irene rattled her reticule.
    “No fare; Miss. I’ll not need money where I’ll be soon enough. You’ve made me feel a burden’s lifted, just by telling another human soul my story. I don’t want to go out in a cell, though, like a caged ferret, but on my feet like a man. So I thank you for what freedom’s left to me.”
    Using the cab wheel as support, he stumbled toward the rear. Irene’s hand stopped him. The precious, murder-tainted ring and scrap of newsprint lay on her gloved palm.
    He reached for them, then his hand clenched. “You’re a fine woman, not so sweet as my Lucy, but with a heart for all that. Keep the ring. I’d not want to wear it to the gallows, or have it thrown into some pile of police evidence.”
    “Is there nothing we can do for you, Mr. Hope?” Irene cried out as he climbed to his seat in slow stages.
    Jefferson Hope picked up the flaccid reins. “You’ve done it—shown me kindness in a world where I’ve lived an unkind life too long.” He lowered his shoulders and stared beyond the roofs’ looming silhouettes to the darkling sky. A vast smudge pot of cloud and fog simmered in the last lurid light of the distant sunset. “I’d ’uv liked to meet my end in the open, but it’s fit a foreign shore will serve as potter’s field for a wanderer like me. Evening, Miss.” Then he nodded to me, while I quailed beside Irene. “Miss.”
    With that polite farewell, he snapped the reins on the horse’s weary flanks. The hansom lumbered into the murk that bottled Irene and myself in the nameless street.
    “Astounding,” Irene breathed. “What an incredible story! What a splendid, tragic man.”
    “A murderer,” I cautioned, “and we have abetted him by permitting