The House Of Silk

request.’
    ‘I took it but he didn’t drink it,’ the orderly grumbled. ‘He didn’t say nothing, neither. He just lay there.’
    ‘Asleep?’ Harriman walked up to Dr Trevelyan until the two of them were but inches apart. ‘Are you really telling me he was ill, doctor, or was it perhaps, as I believed from the outset, that he was dissembling – first so that he would be brought here, second so that he could choose his moment to walk out?’
    ‘As to the first, he was most certainly ill,’ replied Trevelyan. ‘At least, he had a high fever, his pupils were dilated and the sweat was pouring from his brow. I can attest to that, for I examined him myself. As to the second, he could not possibly have walked out of here, as you suggest. Look at the door, for heaven’s sake! It was locked from the outside. There is but one key and it has never left my desk. There are the bolts, which were fastened until Rivers drew them back just now. And even if, by some bizarre and inexplicable means, he had been able to leave the cell, where do you think he would go? To begin with, he would have had to cross this ward and I have been at my desk all afternoon. The door through which you three gentlemen entered was locked. And there must be a dozen more locks and bolts between here and the front gate. Are you to tell me that he somehow spirited himself through all of them too?’
    ‘It is certainly true that walking out of Holloway would be nothing short of impossible,’ Hawkins agreed.
    ‘Nobody can leave this place,’ muttered Rivers, and he seemed to smirk as if at some private joke. ‘Unless his name is Wood. Now, he left here only this afternoon. Not on his own two legs though, and I don’t think anyone would have had a mind to ask him where
he
was going, nor when he was coming back.’
    ‘Wood? Who is Wood?’ Harriman asked.
    ‘Jonathan Wood was here in the infirmary,’ Trevelyan replied. ‘And you’re wrong to make light of it, Rivers. He died last night and was carried out in a coffin not an hour ago.’
    ‘A coffin? Are you telling me that a closed coffin was taken from this room?’ I could see the detective working things out and realised, as did he, that it presented the most obvious, indeed the only method for Holmes’s escape. He turned on the orderly. ‘Was the coffin here when you took in the water?’ he demanded.
    ‘It might have been.’
    ‘Did you leave Holmes on his own, even for a few seconds?’
    ‘No, sir. Not for one second. I never took my eyes off him.’ The orderly shuffled on his feet. ‘Well, maybe I attended to Collins when he had his fit.’
    ‘What are you saying, Rivers?’ Trevelyan cried.
    ‘I opened the door. I went in. He was sound asleep on the bed. Then Collins began his coughing. I put the mug down and ran out to him.’
    ‘And what then? Did you see Holmes again?’
    ‘No, sir. I settled Collins. Then I went back and locked the door.’
    There was a long silence. We all stood there, staring at each other as if waiting to see who would dare to speak first.
    It was Harriman. ‘Where is the coffin?’ he exclaimed.
    ‘It will have been carried outside,’ Trevelyan replied. ‘There will be a wagon waiting to carry it to the undertaker in Muswell Hill.’ He grabbed his coat. ‘It may not be too late. If it’s still there, we can intercept it before it leaves.’
    I will never forget the progress that we made through the prison. Hawkins went first with a furious Harriman at his side. Trevelyan and Rivers came next. I followed last, the book and the key still in my hand. How ridiculous they seemed now, for even if I had been able to deliver them to my friend, along with a ladder and a length of rope, he would never have been able to get out of this place on his own. It was only because of Hawkins, signalling at the various guards, that we were able to leave ourselves. The doors were unlocked and swung open, one after another. Nobody stood in our way. We took a different path to that which I had come originally, for this time we passed a laundry with men sweating at giant tubs and another room filled with boilers and convoluted metal tubes that supplied the prison’s heating, finally crossing a smaller, grassy courtyard and arriving at what was evidently a side entrance. It was only here that a guard attempted to block our passage, demanding our letters of authority.
    ‘Don’t be a damn fool,’ Harriman snapped. ‘Do you not recognise your own chief