Sherlock Holmes Read Free Page B

well-educated
manners and speech. In her hazel eyes was the calm strength of a
woman who, though young, has had to make her own way in the world;
in the firmness of her mouth, the determination of a woman who
knows her mind… and her heart.
    “I didn’t dare go to the station myself to
ask to see Julian,” she told us, with a glance across the parlor at
the desk where the night-porter dozed. “I knew it would only make
matters the worse for him, if the men there suspected he was
engaged to a white woman. Yet he’s told me about you, Professor
Diggs—” She smiled at the wizard, “—and I’ve seen you on stage,
when you and Julian were on the same bill. I hoped to speak with
you alone, not knowing who your friends were.”
    “Is it only the opinion of the police, and
the public, that you fear?” inquired Holmes. “Or is there
opposition from another quarter as well?”
    Miss Prince raised her chin. “If you mean my
family,” she said, “I have had no contact with my father for three
years now. I was of age when I left his house, and will need no
permission of his to wed. Still, Julian and I have been deeply
discreet. I doubt my father even knows where I am living. But you
see what this country is, Mr. Holmes. I’m sure you can guess at the
kind of violence that would be unleashed against a man of Julian’s
race, should he take unto himself a bride of mine. Now that you
have found my secret, I can only beg of you to keep it – and to
tell me, is there any hope of finding the true kidnapper of that
poor child? For only in recovering her unhurt – and that, quickly –
will there be any salvation for the man I love.”
    “It’s true,” I said, for Holmes’s interest in
sensational crime had given me, over the past twenty years, a great
knowledge of the darker paths of human conduct. “God save him if
the child is found dead.”
    “Three hours ago, Miss Prince,” said Holmes,
“I would have said your fiancé’s fate hung in the balance. Yet I
begin to see a glimmer of light, and I hope, by tomorrow evening,
to have better news to tell you, if, as Watson points out, the
child is not found dead in the meantime. Do not wait up for me,
Watson,” he said, fetching his own greatcoat and our guest’s
well-worn cloak from the rack beside the porter’s desk. “I shall
return to the Palace, once I have seen Miss Prince to her lodgings,
and shall probably be abroad as soon as it grows light enough for
the ferries to run. But please tell Mrs. Carey that I shall come to
the boarding-house for dinner tomorrow evening – this evening, I
should say rather, for it is all of three o’clock! And then, if you
aren’t knocked entirely into horse-nails by tonight’s adventures,
perhaps we three can pay a call to-night.”
    Professor Diggs and I had taken two adjoining
rooms with a sitting-room the size of Mrs. Hudson’s dining-table
between them; as we ascended the stair, Diggs sighed, and shook his
head. “It’s a bad business, Watson,” he said, “a bad business. When
I left this country, forty years ago, we were in the midst of a war
to make an end of slavery: to make an end, many of us dared hope,
to injustice as well. And in the years I spent away – organizing
the realm and building a city of emeralds, and trying to convince
the real witches that ruled that country that I was not only a real
wizard but more powerful than they – I often dreamed of my own
land, and of what it had become and was becoming in my absence…
Something beautiful, I hoped. Something shining and filled with
promise, better even than the magic realm where I ruled. And coming
home I have found…”
    His brow clouded and he shook his head.
    I reflected on the men I’d seen gathered
outside the jail – on what I knew would happen, should the poor
child be found dead on the morrow - and had to admit that in
recovering his sanity (for so I interpreted his “return” from years
in his private world), he had perhaps not had the