Sherlock Holmes: The Dark Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page B

perfectly clear from
this distance.  All she could now discern of the theatre were diffused lights.
    She passed under a streetlight, its glow illuminating the mist
surrounding it.  A shadow crossed her face as she passed under the light.  She
noticed that everything seemed so quiet within veil of fog surrounding her – as
though nothing existed beyond the fifty, or so, yards that she could see.
    The fog enhanced a feeling of mystery within her, an
atmospheric dreamland in her heightened imagination.  In this fantasy a great
adventure, fraught with danger and excitement was about to take place, in which
she played the principal role.  She imagined herself in peril and being rescued
by a handsome hero.  A passing carriage, pulled by two horses, brought her
abruptly back to reality; thus shattering the romantic mystery.
    She continued along her usual route to Charing Cross Road by
turning right into Orange Street, which served as a shortcut.  This narrow
street was cobbled with a small pavement on each side.  The cobbles were
uneven, an interminable mass of raised stones interspersed with mud filled pot
holes.  A row of buildings ran down both sides of the road, their rooftops
barely visible in the freezing foggy air.
    She turned left into Whitcomb Street, which disappeared into
a misty oblivion, prompting a memory deep in the girl’s subconscious to be
recalled.  It was so long ago, when she was just a young girl, but old enough
to understand the horror before her eyes.  Perhaps the atmosphere created by
the fog was similar to that from the night of this memory.  She shuddered at
the recollection of the unclear images of her nightmares.  ‘Why should I
remember now the evil I’ve fought so hard to forget?’ she thought to herself. 
She shuddered as she recalled strange, distorted memories from the night she
witnessed a man kill another.
    She knew the killer to be dead, having been hanged for the
murder she had witnessed.  It was her evidence that condemned him to his fate,
so she knew he was dead.  Even so, she suddenly felt uneasy about what
may lurk ahead in the eerie gloom.  Her trepidation caused her to momentarily slow
down.  She inwardly laughed her unfounded fear away and continued her journey,
albeit with a little more stealth in her step.
    v
    The flare of a match, as it lit a cigarette, briefly illuminated
a man’s pitted face, revealing a small scar on the right cheek.  He rubbed his
hands together in a futile attempt to defeat the cold night air.  The man
waited in a side street between Haymarket and Shaftesbury Avenue, drawing hard
on his cigarette to calm his nerves.
    In the distance he heard something…  He strained his ears. 
Someone was approaching.  He took the cigarette from his mouth, dropped it on
the pavement and stepped on it.  He held his breath in order to listen more
closely.  Someone was approaching.  He found a house with no lights showing
from within and crept into the small front garden.  He squatted down behind the
garden’s wall and hid…
    v
    Holmes searched through file after file, read newspaper
articles and accounts of old cases painstakingly written by Watson, several of
which were somewhat embellished.  His search became increasingly more frantic
as his frustration grew.
    “What does it mean?” he growled to himself.  ‘The answer
must lie somewhere within these files,’ he thought.  He continued searching,
scattering papers all over the room, becoming more agitated as he did so.  Something
within him knew that he held the answer he was so desperate to find, but he
just could not find it.  He searched through everything, but to no avail.  He
threw the last file across the room in anger.  His gaze fell upon a small bottle
and a syringe on the desk…
    v
    The girl continued along Whitcomb Street and then turned
right into Lisle Street, which was silent and deserted.  The only evidence of
any people were the faint lights emanating from the windows