The House Of Silk

you, there it will be. That was how I felt as I approached The Bag of Nails a second time, just before five o’clock, with the sun already down and a chill, unforgiving darkness descending on the city. Mary had been asleep when I returned home and I had not disturbed her, but as I had stood there in my consulting room, weighing my revolver in my hand and checking that it was fully loaded, I wondered what a casual observer would make of the scene: a respectable doctor in Kensington arming himself and preparing to set out in pursuit of a conspiracy that had so far encompassed murder, torture, kidnap and the perversion of justice. I slipped the weapon into my pocket, reached for my greatcoat and went out.
    Holmes was no longer in disguise, apart from a hat and a scarf which he had drawn across the lower part of his face. He had ordered two brandies to brace us against the bitterness of the night. I would not have been surprised if it had snowed, for there had already been a few flakes blowing in the breeze as I arrived. We barely spoke, but I remember that as we set the glasses down he glanced at me, and I saw all the good humour and resoluteness that I knew so well, positively dancing in his eyes and understood that he was as eager as I to have this done with.
    ‘So, Watson …?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, Holmes,’ I said. ‘I am ready.’
    ‘And I am very glad to have you once again at my side.’
    A cab carried us east and we descended on the Whitechapel Road, walking the remaining distance to Jackdaw Lane. These travelling fairs could be found all over the countryside during the summer months but came into the city as soon as the weather turned and they were notorious for the late hours they kept and the din that they made – indeed, I wondered how the local populace could possibly endure Dr Silkin’s House of Wonders, for I heard it long before I saw it; the grinding of an organ, the beat of a drum, and a man’s voice shouting into the night. Jackdaw Lane was a narrow passageway running between the Whitechapel and Commercial Roads, with buildings, mainly shops and warehouses, rising three storeys on either side with windows that seemed too small for the amount of bricks that surrounded them. An alleyway opened out about halfway down and it was here that a man had imposed himself, dressed in a frock coat, an old-fashioned four-in-hand necktie and a top hat so beaten about that it seemed to be perched on the side of his head as if trying to throw itself off. He had the beard, the moustache, the pointed nose and the bright eyes of a pantomime Mephistopheles.
    ‘One penny entrance!’ he exclaimed. ‘Step inside and you will not regret it. Here you will see some of the wonders of the world from Negros to Esquimaux and more besides. Come, gentlemen! Dr Silkin’s House of Wonders. It will amaze you. It will astonish you. Never will you forget what you see here tonight.’
    ‘You are Dr Silkin?’ Holmes asked.
    ‘I have that honour, sir. Dr Asmodeus Silkin, late of India, late of the Congo. My travels have taken me all over the world and all that I have experienced you will find here for the sum of a single penny.’
    A black dwarf in a pea jacket and military trousers stood next to him, beating out a rhythm on a drum and adding a loud roll every time the penny was mentioned. We paid over two coins and were duly ushered through.
    The spectacle that awaited us took me by quite surprise. I suppose in the harsh light of the day it might have been revealed in all its tawdry shabbiness but the night, held at bay by a ring of burning braziers, had lent it a certain exoticism so that if you did not look too closely you really could believe that you had been transported to another world … perhaps one in a storybook.
    We were in a cobbled yard, surrounded by buildings in such a state of disrepair that they were partly open to the elements with crumbling doorways and rickety staircases dangling precariously from the brickwork. Some of these entranceways had been hung with crimson curtains and signs advertising entertainments that a further payment of a halfpence or farthing would provide. The man with no neck. The world’s ugliest woman. The five-legged pig. Others were open, with waxworks and peep shows providing a glimpse of the sort of horrors that I knew all too well from my time with Holmes. Murder seemed to be the predominant theme. Maria Martin was there, as was Mary Ann Nichols, lying with her throat slit and