“The one with the loose nail in his shoe,” Holmes added by way of explanation. “It keeps clicking on the cobbles, and it has been doing so for some time.”
Watson concentrated, and now indeed he did hear a faint and regular clicking amid the clatter and din of the docks. “Surely he wouldn’t have come in a circle, too, unless he was following us?”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Holmes, rounding a corner and abruptly stepping into a narrow ginnel, dragging Watson with him.
A moment later, they’d moved through it into a derelict hovel, where they waited. Seconds passed, then there was a hurried pattering of feet as someone came urgently into the ginnel behind them. Clearly, the stalker was anxious for his prey not to elude him. The feet went on past the entrance to the hovel, the loose nail clicking all the way, then halted and backtracked. The owner of the feet, a burly, brutish-looking fellow in a shabby three-piece suit, with a dirty bowler hat pulled down on his broad, fat head, came warily in. He froze when he felt the muzzle of Watson’s revolver against his lower back.
“That’s far enough, sir,” said the doctor.
The man made a sharp move toward his jacket pocket, but Holmes stepped smartly up to him. “Keep your hands where we can see them, if you please.”
“What is this?” the man asked, his accent pure Bow. “You trying to rob me or something?”
“We might ask you the same question,” said Watson.
“Then again we might not,” Holmes added. “I doubt a common thief would be so careless as to follow his intended prey for several minutes along public thoroughfares when he has all these alleys and doorways to skulk in. So tell us, who are you?”
The fellow grinned, showing yellow, feral teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Holmes eyed him, recognizing the stubborn surliness of the foot soldier rather than the officer in command. “What’s your connection with Harold Jobson?” he asked.
At this, there was a sudden nervous look about the fellow. “Jobson?” he said. “Dunno him. Never ’eard of him.”
“If you’ve never heard of him, why are you trembling?”
“I never ’eard of him, I tell ya!” the fellow suddenly bellowed, driving one hamlike elbow backward, catching Watson hard in the midriff. Winded, the doctor gasped and twisted in pain. He managed to hang on to the collar of the man’s jacket, but dropped his revolver. Holmes went down to retrieve the weapon, in which time, their captive made his escape, hurling himself sideways, tearing free of his jacket and scrambling out through the door and away along the ginnel.
Watson made to follow, but Holmes bade him stay where he was and get his breath back. There was no sense in making a scene, he said; after all, the fellow could complain that he’d done nothing wrong but that they had waylaid him at gunpoint . . . and he’d be telling the truth. Watson groaned and rubbed at his chest. “That chap’s plainly frightened of something,” he observed.
Holmes nodded as he rifled the pockets of the discarded jacket. “Yes, and whatever it is . . . he was more frightened of that than he was of your trusty Webley.”
He made a thorough search of the garment, but found only one or two items of interest: a particularly nasty lock knife, its blade at least six inches long and honed to razor sharpness, its hinge well oiled so the weapon could be drawn and flicked open at a moment’s notice; and a small, leather-bound notebook, with two entries in it. Both were written in pencil, in a spidery hand. They read:
Randolph Daker, 14 Commercial Road
Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street
Watson was shocked. “Good grief. The cad’s been onto you all day.”
Holmes nodded. “Not just me, though. Randolph Daker of Commercial Road . . . anyone we know?”
Watson shook his head. “I doubt it. Commercial Road’s up in the East End.”
“Perhaps we should pay it a visit?”
“Good Lord . . . I thought this neighborhood was dangerous.”
That afternoon they took a cab to the City, then proceeded on foot through the teeming slums of Cheapside and Whitechapel. Both men were already familiar with this neighborhood; it wasn’t ten years since the so-called Ripper had terrorized these hungry, crowded streets. The shocking depredations had brought the crime and squalor in the district to worldwide attention, but little, it seemed, had changed. The roadways were still filthy with mud and animal dung, the entries still cluttered with rubbish. The housing was of the poorest stock: sooty brown-brick tenements, damp, dismal, decaying, leaning against one another for mutual support. The inhabitants, and there were a great many of them—families vastly outnumbered dwellings in this part of London—were exclusively of the gaunt and needy variety. More often than not, rags passed for clothes, and beggary and drunkenness were the day’s chief occupations.
“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Watson muttered. “I’d have thought the Housing of the Working Classes Act would have resolved all this.”
Holmes shook his head. “Goodly intentions are no use without goodly sums of money, Watson. The property tax doesn’t provide funds even remotely sufficient to ease this level of degradation.”
Saddened by what they saw, but, inevitably, more concerned with the job at hand, they pressed on, and an hour later, entered Commercial Road. Number 14 was a tall, narrow, terraced house, set back behind a fenced-off garden, now straggling and overgrown. The house’s lower windows bore no glass, but had boards nailed across them. Only jagged shards were visible in the upper windows.
“It looks derelict,” said Watson.
“It may look derelict, but someone’s been in and out recently,” Holmes replied. He indicated a path leading from the gate to the front door. It was unpaved, but had been beaten through the undergrowth by the regular passage of feet. Several stems of weeds were freshly broken.
They approached the door, which they noticed was standing ajar by a couple of inches. Holmes pushed it open. Beyond, the house was filled with shadow. A nauseating odor, like fish oil or stagnant brine, flowed out.
The detective raised his voice: “Would Mr. Randolph Daker be at home?”
There was no reply. Holmes glanced at Watson, shrugged, and went in. The interior of the building was unimaginably filthy. A litter of rotten food, abandoned clothes, and broken furniture strewed every floorway. The wallpaper, what little there was left of it, hung in torn-down strips; here and there, there were smeared green handprints on it. The smell intensified the farther in they ventured. “Hello?” Watson called again. Still, nobody answered.
At length, they found themselves in what might once have passed for a sitting room. It was cluttered with the same foul wreckage as the rest of the house. Watson was about to call out a third time when Holmes stopped him. The doctor could immediately tell that his friend’s catlike senses had alerted him to something. A tense second passed, then there came a faint shuffle from somewhere close by. An object fell over. There was a grunt, brutish and animalistic . . . and a figure came shambling into view from the doorway connecting to the kitchen and scullery.
It wore a cheap, ill-fitted suit, which had burst at many of its seams. Tendrils of what at first looked like seaweed protruded through them. The same vile matter hung from the figure’s hands and face, and now, as it lurched slowly into the open, it was clear that this was not part of any disguise. Whoever the wretched creature might once have been, his head was now a bloated mass of barnacles and marine-type growths. Vitreous, octopus-like eyes rolled amid thick folds of polyp-ridden flesh. Warty lips hung open on a bottomless, fishlike mouth.