The Dragon Turn Read Free Page B

Once or twice recently Sherlock has seen Grimsby, on his own now, still looking dark and evil, not having grown an inch.But the little villain always averts his gaze, turns away from him, and never looks to be on the job. Crew, the other lieutenant, big, blond and silent, with the ever-present deadness in his eyes of a cold-blooded killer, seems similarly disinterested. Sherlock has seen him standing in doorways down alleyways, on the watch … but never doing anything in the least incriminating.
How are they surviving? How do they make a living?
The boy hasn’t seen any of the other Irregulars, nor has he spotted the two lieutenants together, not since the moment he flushed Malefactor from his secret residence and ran him into hiding. All that remains of his old rival on the London streets is a sense of his presence. Sherlock feels it when he walks near Lincoln Inn’s Field, in the way Grimsby and Crew maintain a look of confidence and ease, as if they are still operating, or being operated by a ghostly hand and mind. In some ways, Sherlock fears Malefactor more than ever. He senses that the tall, sunken-eyed boy with the bulging forehead is still weaving his black magic, and will return … soon.
    Irene has done her best to entertain him by being with him, by visiting the apothecary shop and conversing, or singing while he plays Bell’s violin. She also escorts him (or allows him to escort her) to the theater. Plays haven’t tended to intrigue him, unless there is an impossibly difficult crime to be solved — which he usually does halfway through, announcing the villain out loud, as if it were a trifle. It irritates Irene to no end. Low operas are better; violin concertos much better; circuses temporarily sublime; and magic shows supreme. But the very best time he ever had with Irene was the evening she took him to see Charles Dickens.
    The legendary novelist was appearing at St. James’s Hall and the spectators were queued up outside, like cattle waiting to feed. The big theater held more than two thousand people and every space on the green benches was filled. Sherlock will always recall looking up at the beautiful gold-and-red ribbed ceiling, the overflowing balcony that wrapped around the hall, the stark stage before him with its simple backdrop and writing desk — all awaiting the immortal Dickens. The nation’s most famous man was about to display his extraordinary imagination, to become his marvelous characters before their very eyes —
Mr. Scrooge might appear
— to show England and the human race its soul.
    The gaslights were simultaneously dimmed in the house and brought up on the stage, and Dickens materialized, lit so starkly that his face, the creases in his pale skin, his very eyes, seemed to be just inches away. The crowd rose and the hall shook with the reception, but Dickens didn’t acknowledge them. He set his book down on his desk, placed one leg on a wrung, gripped his collar with his hands and said, in a voice as clear as a bell, “
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
 … the Court Room scene.” There was another ovation from the audience. And then he read. And as he read he transported every man, woman and child who watched and listened, to a courtroom in a story … that seemed more real than the theater itself. Soon, he had his spectators crying with laughter, amazed at the silliness, the ineptitude of his characters, and thus of all humanity. It made Sherlock think of how we all play roles, how we all want to BE someone, someone shiny, more important than who we really are.
    When Dickens was done with that passage, he turned to something that made the audience gasp.
“The Adventures of Oliver Twist,”
he intoned. And after a dramatic pause, in which he seemed to eye every audience member, said, “Chapter Forty-seven … Fatal Consequences.” Everyone knew what that meant. He was going to read what he had once promised he would never read … the murder of Nancy,