Chapter Text
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake
The moon was hanging full and high over the horizon, its argent glow both illuminating and subduing the gently rolling Essex landscape below, dulling the greens of its fields and pasturage to variegated gray. It was a crisp, fat, late autumn moon which shone down upon the four ancient yews that yet remained to guard the front lawn of the Five Yews estate, upon the kitchen garden and neighboring orchard which comprised much of its back lawn, and upon a barely visible speck of a boy moving furtively beneath the heavily laden boughs of the orchard's apple trees.
It was a friendly and benevolent moon in this boy's estimation, its gentle silver glow reflecting helpfully off of the windfall apples scattered amidst the obscuring gloom of the grass. Once he had gathered a tidy harvest into his knapsack, the boy hoisted it up onto his narrow shoulders and disappeared beneath the heavy veil of moon-shadow woven by the foliage of the closely growing trees. When he reappeared it was at the far side of the orchard, moving along a path which spooled out across the landscape like pale ribbon, leading towards a large L-shaped stable barely visible in the distance.
This tiny speck of a boy was Tiger Daniels, who, at twelve years old, was smaller and wiser than most other children his age. Had he occupied a place more esteemed by the world he would perhaps have been deemed fine-boned or said to be afflicted with a delicate constitution, but as an orphaned stable boy he was merely scrawny and pallid. Beneath Tiger's perpetually tousled black hair was a pair of large, wary brown eyes limned with thick, dark lashes, a straight but longish nose, and a rather somber little mouth, all of which were set into a narrow, heart-shaped face. They were features which combined with his diminutive size to create an elfin appearance which Tiger resented for its tendency to attract various forms of unwanted attention from adults and other children alike. He was a quiet and independent boy, much more comfortable observing his fellow man from the margins than he was mingling in their midst.
It was Tiger's preference for solitude which had brought him out so late on this unseasonably warm, moonlit night in October, almost certainly the last night he would be able to sleep up in the stable loft before the cold of winter set in. He had a perfectly serviceable little bed back in the groom's cottage - the somewhat euphemistic name given one of the estate's outbuildings which had been renovated into a homey dormitory for some of the outdoor staff - but it was in a room shared with a fellow stable boy. Much better to exchange a bit of comfort for a bit of privacy, in Tiger's estimation.
That was how he had ended up at the Five Yews in the first place, having wandered onto the estate accidentally two days after fleeing the orphanage in nearby Colchester. The dusty, odiferous little loft above the stable's harness room felt like heaven to Tiger after the orphanage's damp stone and its dreary dormitory, crowded with serried ranks of creaking cots upon which huddled dozens of other lost and abandoned boys. He had been living in the loft for almost a week before he was finally discovered by Wilcox, the kinder of he estate's two grooms. Tiger's lack of family, his quietly cooperative manner, and his waifish appearance had quickly won Wilcox over, and Tiger was hired on as a stable boy. Although he remained grateful for his bed and the room which he shared with Freddy, and for the meals he was fed from the servant's kitchen in the big house, Tiger still liked to sleep in the stables when the weather permitted.
On this October night Tiger strolled easily along the edge of the pasture, soothed by his solitude; with no one to watch or to be watched by, he relaxed into his true and simple self. By the time he reached the stables, a long, low structure whose dove gray stone gleamed in the dark like scrimshawed ivory, Tiger was manfully clenching his jaws against the chattering of his teeth. Nevertheless he pulled his left hand from his pocket as he walked along the stable’s ancient stone wall; its crags and facets, gentled by the passing of time, felt solid and comforting beneath Tiger’s trailing fingertips. One of the horses, alerted by the quiet crunching of Tiger’s footsteps on the bordering gravel, stuck its head through the only window left open during cool weather and gave a snort of recognition to its little visitor.
“Hullo, Dotty. It’s just me,” Tiger whispered. As if reassured the horse gave a slight upward jerk of its head and watched idly as Tiger drew to a halt at the stable door. With both hands he squeezed its heavy iron latch, bracing his weight against the inevitable wobble that resulted from the warped door scraping the lintel, and stopping it with his toes precisely before the rusty hinges began to squeak. Like a flashing blade Tiger slipped into the stable’s velvety, aromatic darkness and closed the door silently on the cool breeze that wafted in behind him.
Once inside Tiger paused to slip his boots onto his feet, wet from the dewy grass. While he couldn’t accurately be called a tidy boy, Tiger was somewhat finnicky about what came in contact with his skin, and he had previously discovered that having the manure dust and hay fragments of the stable floor plastered to his wet feet was an unpleasant sensation indeed. Once he was properly shod Tiger began making his way towards the harness room, located at one of the ends of the L-shaped stables. Although he had several candle stubs in his knapsack, he had no need for light to navigate the familiar aisles which bisected both wings of the building into two rows of opposing stalls. He silently greeted each horse as he crept past. Midas…Snooker…Charlotte… The list had become something of a liturgical cant for Tiger with a solemn but soothing rhythm all its own. Bonnie…Ryder…Lionheart.
Only at the last stall did Tiger halt to stare blindly into the tenebrous recess. “Hullo, Lionheart,” he said softly and paused for a response. Lionheart was the oldest horse at the Five Yews, a proud and venerable hunter who now lived a life of comfortable retirement, permitted to come and go as he pleased. “I brought you some apples,” Tiger added hopefully. He heard the horse sigh faintly in the darkness but no other sound followed. Guessing that the old thoroughbred was bedded down for the night, Tiger shoved an extra blanket borrowed from the harness room into his knapsack and climbed the swaying, ramshackle ladder up to the empty loft.
After digging around in his knapsack for candle and matches it took Tiger little time to set up his bed, first shaking and then laying out a discarded horse blanket which he kept rolled up in a corner and overlaying it with the blanket from the harness room. For his own warmth he had brought the old woolen blanket from his own bed back in the groom’s cottage, and he wrapped this around his bony shoulders as he settled cross-legged in the center of his pallet and dumped out his knapsack. Onto the blanket came tumbling the apples, two Bath buns snuck to him by the sympathetic cook, and his beloved copy of Robinson Crusoe. Intending to read until he was sleepy, as was his nightly habit, Tiger selected one of the better among the apples, drew the blanket tighter about his shoulders, and hunched happily down over his book.
He had been reading long enough to eat one of the apples, both of the buns, and have one of the candles gutter out when he heard a familiar knicker from the stalls below. “Lionheart,” Tiger called out happily, “did you smell my apples? Shall I bring you some?” As he cautiously blew out his candles and scooped the apples hastily back into his knapsack he heard the old horse snort in reply. When he reached the bottom of the ladder he found Lionheart standing at the door of his stall, his sleek, finely shaped head extending into the aisle. The horse greeted Tiger’s outstretched hand with a gentle nuzzle of his velvety nose, then spent the next several minutes happily crunching away at his unexpected snack.
Lionheart had finished his final apple and was doggedly sniffing and nudging a softly giggling Tiger when the horse’s ears swiveled and it suddenly lifted its head. Following Lionheart’s gaze, Tiger turned his head and stared into the blackness of the aisle leading to the stable door. Only too late did he hear what had first alerted Lionheart: the unmistakable sound of human footsteps crunching on the gravel outside.
When he heard the creak of the door’s latch being compressed Tiger dropped to the floor and crawled under the door of Lionheart’s stall, remembering at the last second to reach back and snatch up his knapsack. Clutching it to his chest, Tiger scurried awkwardly into the darkest corner and listened intently. After the stable door closed, he heard several seconds of faint, indistinct scuffling near the doorway and then someone began walking down the aisle. Tiger noticed that the footsteps sounded strangely upon the flagstones, with an extra clump and a drag. As he huddled in the hay, breathing lightly and silently through his mouth, he saw an eerie glow approaching and realized that whoever was moving around the stables was carrying a lantern. Tiger watched the interloper’s shadow pass Lionheart’s stall and heard the odd, clopping steps round the corner into the harness room, heard the faint jingling of reins, then saw the dim orange glow of the lantern make its bobbing way back towards the door. After another brief period of vague scraping noises at the entryway, the door opened, then closed, and a peaceful silence descended once more onto the stables.
Although one or two possible and fairly reasonable explanations had occurred to Tiger by the time he had given Lionheart his farewells and made his way back up to the loft, something about the incident lodged uneasily in the back of his mind. As he laid down on his pallet, pulled the woolen blanket up to his chin, and rocked back and forth to tuck it tightly around himself, Tiger tried to remember where he had ever heard those footsteps before, and he was still pondering this when he fell asleep a few minutes later.
When Tiger trotted to the outhouse the next morning he was surprised to find that the sunrise was already a distinct carmine bloom stretching across the horizon. Yet he had woken in the stables alone, aside from the horses; where were the rest of the staff? It would be one thing if Freddy, the other stable boy, were to oversleep, but Wilcox was punctual as a Bavarian clock. Tiger considered running up to the big house, but then he ran the risk of appearing both tardy and foolish himself if nothing were awry and he returned to the stables to find that the other staff had arrived in his absence. Deciding to err on the side of caution, Tiger led the first two horses out to the exercise field and began mucking out their stables alone.
He had not gotten far into the task when Freddy burst through the stable door. “Tiger, stop!” he cried, waving his arms from the doorway as if he were afraid to step inside.
“What?” Tiger asked rather stupidly, pausing with a rake of filthy hay clutched in his hands.
“Wilcox says to stop what you’re doing and clear out. C’mon,” the other stable boy exhorted, gesturing urgently at the yard outside.
“Why?” Tiger queried, his narrow face remaining inexpressive but his voice belying a note of suspicion. He had learned long ago to receive requests with a degree of caution.
Freddy gaped and flapped his arms in exasperation. “Just drop it and come on, you little prat!” he cried. “I’ll tell you out here.”
Now realizing that the other boy was genuinely distressed, Tiger laid down the rake and hastily made his way to the door, a queasy pit of anxiety beginning to form at the bottom of his stomach. “What is it?” he asked as he approached the doorway.
“Master Tipton done went and hung himself,” Freddy announced, referring to the owner of the Five Yews and the head of its household, Harold Tipton. When Tiger froze abruptly two paces from the door the other boy snatched the sleeve of his jumper and pulled him out with a growl. “Hung himself,” Freddy repeated, marching rapidly towards the gate leading to the big house with Tiger in tow, apparently determined to drag the smaller boy away if needs must. “Dead as a ha’penny nail. Wilcox said he done it with some horse tack, so the police say they’ll have to look over the stables. See?”
Freddy pointed up the path and Tiger, breaking free of his captor’s clutches with a twisting jerk of his arm, stepped forward to see a tiny cluster of darkly uniformed men moving across the estate grounds in the distance, headed in their direction.
A wave of nausea surged up Tiger’s throat as the pit in his stomach deepened. Although he was dimly aware that Freddy had resumed talking, Tiger was too distracted by his own thoughts to follow someone else’s. Specifically he was distracted by his memories of the eerie lantern light bobbing past the door of Lionheart’s stall late the night before, and the odd, dragging footsteps that had accompanied it. Had he heard Master Tipton preparing for his own doom? If so, why had the man been walking so strangely? Tiger had only come into contact with the owner of the Five Yews on a handful of occasions, but he was certain that the man had no deformity which would account for such an unusual stride. In fact, Tiger could think of no one in either the Tipton family or the staff who were lamed to any noticeable degree - for surely so singular a gait would be impossible to conceal.
He remained lost on this train of thought until a shove from Freddy forced him back into full awareness of his surroundings. The men they had earlier seen crossing the lawn had now come far enough down the path to be within hailing distance, and Tiger was able to discern that the group was comprised of three policemen, with Wilcox leading the way.
“There’s the lad you’re looking for,” Wilcox told the constables, pointing at the approaching pair. “Tiger, these policemen need to talk to you. There’s been an…an accident at the house.”
“I told him what happened,” Freddy said sullenly as they all drew up together in the center of the path. As if Tiger were a contaminating presence Freddy crossed over past the knot of policemen and stood beside the groom, his arms folded officiously across his chest. Tiger felt his knees and fingers trembling in fear as one of the constables stepped forward and bent over him, but he straightened his back and faced the man bravely.
“What’s your name, lad?” the constable asked in a distinct city accent.
“Tiger Daniels, sir,” Tiger answered, belatedly snatching his knitted cap off of his head.
“And you’re the other stable boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wilcox says you slept in the stables last night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why did you sleep in the stables when Wilcox says you have a bed of your own indoors, where it’s warm?”
“Because…” Tiger began, twisting the hat nervously in his hands, fumbling through his mind for the answer least likely to provoke further questions. He was relieved when Wilcox came to his rescue.
“He usually does when the weather is warm, sir,” Wilcox said awkwardly, and Tiger was pained to see that the groom was embarrassed on his behalf. “He has his own ways of doing most things, but he’s never caused any trouble.”
“Hmm,” the policeman replied, casting a dubious gaze down at Tiger’s messy hair, dirty face, and spindly limbs. Tiger could sense that the man had taken a dislike to him and couldn’t keep himself from staring back at the constable a bit defiantly. “Well, did you see or hear anyone enter the stables last night?”
“Yes, sir.” Tiger was careful to keep his expression neutral, but he had decided that he wasn’t going to be overly-cooperative.
“Well, what was it, boy?” the policeman said impatiently.
“I saw someone with a lantern come in the stables, walk to the harness room, and then walk back out,” Tiger answered flatly. He knew that if he refused making the effort to act as boys were expected to act, adults of this policeman’s type tended to assume that he was a mental defective and would quickly leave him alone.
One of the other policemen spoke up. “Must have been Tipton going out to get the reins.”
“Hmm,” the first policeman grunted back over his shoulder. Then, turning back and glaring down at Tiger: “Stay where we can find you, boy, in case we need to question you further.”
“Tiger, you and Freddy can run off and eat breakfast downstairs in the big house,” Wilcox told the two stable boys. “After that I want you to stay around the cottage until you’re told.”
After mumbling their compliance the boys took off toward the house at a trot, leaving Wilcox to lead the police up to the eerily quiet stable yards. Once they had advanced a hundred yards or so down the path, Tiger slowed his pace and let Freddy go on ahead, wanting to stroll quietly alone with his own thoughts.
Four hours later Tiger was sitting moodily on the stoop of the cottage, watching the horses grazing peacefully in the back pasture, unbothered by the human tragedy and drama that had touched the periphery of their world. It made Tiger restless and irritable that he wasn’t there with the horses, brushing them down after exercise, pumping them water, going through his normal routine. Most of all he missed being able to visit Lionheart, his favorite companion at the Five Yews.
Contrary to Wilcox’s instructions, after breakfast Freddy had taken off to parts unknown, and Tiger had made no effort to stop him; it was a relief not to be exhausted by the other boy’s chatter. Having been unable to retrieve his knapsack from the loft in the stable and thus deprived of his only book, Tiger had whiled away the time flipping through the penny dreadfuls and other cast-off magazines that were circulated amongst the staff. Having exhausted those, he was wandering about the grounds looking for interesting pebbles when Freddy came running up the path from the direction of the big house.
“Tiger! Tiger!” he panted, his face flushed and his eyes bright with excitement. “You’ll never believe what happened!”
“What?” Tiger asked, carefully stowing the few pebbles he had collected in his trouser pocket.
“The police think Tipton was murdered, and they called up Sherlock Holmes!”
“You’re a liar,” Tiger said diffidently.
“Am not!” Freddy shot back. “He’s up at the stables right now, I saw him!”
“How do you know it was Sherlock Holmes?”
“Hendricks told me,” Freddy insisted boldly, referring to the estate’s ancient butler. “He let him in the house!”
“Then how did he know?” Tiger demanded, equally stubborn.
“Well,” Freddy said with the performance of an easy shrug. “The man looked like Sherlock Holmes, didn’t he?”
Tiger shook his head in disgust. “That’s stupid,” he grumbled.
“You’ll see,” the other boy said confidently, strolling off towards the back of the cottage towards the privy. “I bet he comes to ask you questions - you’re one of them witnesses!”
Tiger tried to resume hunting for pebbles but his mind was now disturbed. Even though he wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, Freddy’s arrogance made Tiger suspect that the other boy was telling the truth, and the prospect of meeting Sherlock Holmes filled him with equal parts excitement and dread. Along with many of his peers, Tiger eagerly devoured any news of the detective’s exploits that fell into his hands. When he was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of “The Strand” that contained the latest recounting of Holmes’s exploits, Tiger lingered long over the narrative, re-reading it until he had virtually committed it to memory. He secretly aspired to be as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes when he grew up - not so much to solve crime, although Tiger had indulged in plenty such daydreams, but more as a kind of self defense. Always conscious of his below-average size and plagued with the suspicion that he was singularly different from most other people, Tiger thought that if he could only outsmart those who would bully him as Sherlock Holmes outsmarted criminals, then he could avoid conflict with his fellow man and live a life of relative peace and solitude.
Beginning to feel anxious outside under the vast expanse of open sky, like a hare waiting to be passed over by a hawk’s shadow, Tiger retreated to his room on the cottage’s second story and added the four newly found pebbles to the collection that crowded the top of his bedside table. The addition of new pebbles always threw his arrangement into disarray, and Tiger quickly lost himself in a methodical search for the reconfiguration of his collection which he would find most pleasing. Handling and ordering the pebbles distracted him into a state of placidity, necessitating an infinite series of careful observations, comparisons, and judgments. He was still happily absorbed in this occupation when he was startled out of his reverie by a sudden shout from the cottage below.
“Tiger!” Wilcox’s booming voice brought Tiger back to reality, and the pit suddenly opened up in his stomach again, deeper now than ever before.
“Sir?” Tiger called back, already up and moving towards his bedroom door, certain now of what was coming.
“Come downstairs, lad, you’re wanted in the parlor.”
The nervous trembling had returned to Tiger’s knees, forcing him to hold the handrail and slowing his progress down the cottage’s two narrow and treacherous flights of stairs. Once at the bottom he wobbled down the hall and stepped timidly into the parlor.
“Ah,” Wilcox cried, “Here he is, gentlemen.”
Two men who had been peering out the warped cottage window turned around simultaneously, and Tiger had no doubt which one was Sherlock Holmes. He was tall and whip thin, like a normal sized man who had been stretched on the rack, with a beaked nose and a pale complexion that was marred only by incongruously boyish splotches of pink high on his gaunt cheeks. He was younger than Tiger had imagined, his face smoothly shaven with only the beginnings of wrinkles at the outer corners of his eerily piercing gray eyes. For several seconds the detective merely stared at him silently; with his neatly combed black hair, his black suit, his flowing black Inverness cape, and his impassive but relentlessly observant gaze, Tiger felt as though he were a field mouse who had been cornered by an enormous raven, and he squirmed uncomfortably.
Tiger glanced at Holmes’s companion, whom he presumed to be the author whose narratives he had read in “The Strand”, Dr. John Watson. Tiger was relieved when Watson gave him a friendly smile and tried to give him a wavering little grin in return. Watson seemed to be the opposite of Holmes in many ways: clad in conservative tweeds, a bit shorter than average, stocky and broad-chested. He had kindly blue eyes, and a slightly ruddy complexion with wavy, tawny colored hair and a bushy mustache to match. Watson looked no different than the hordes of well-to-do gentlemen who visited the Five Yews estate every year, Tiger thought, while Holmes looked more like a wraith who might haunt its halls after midnight.
“Please make yourselves comfortable on the sofa,” Wilcox said, finally ending what had seemed to Tiger to be an agonizing and interminable silence, and the two men complied. Holmes’s unnerving gaze turned upon Tiger again like the highly concentrated beam of a lighthouse, and the ghost of a smile flickered momentarily at the corners of his mouth as he gestured to a tattered chair nearby. Tiger shuffled over and obediently sat in the chair, staring down at the carpet and fidgeting his fingers nervously in his lap.
“There’s a good chap,” Holmes said. “Mr. Wilcox tells me you’re called Tiger. I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my companion, Dr. John Watson. The police have asked me to look into the matter of Master Tipton’s unfortunate demise.” The detective spoke with the refined accent of a highly educated gentleman, but Tiger was surprised by his voice: a slightly hoarse tenor, higher than Tiger would have expected from a man of his height, and kinder than Holmes’s rather forbidding demeanor. “There’s no need to be frightened, you’ve done nothing wrong. I only want you to tell me about last night.”
“Yes, sir,” Tiger said, feeling slightly more at ease.
“You and Freddy are the stable boys.”
Unsure whether he had been asked a question or not, Tiger merely nodded.
“Mr. Wilcox and Freddy say that you slept out in the stables last night. Did something happen to drive you out of doors?”
“No, sir. I sleep there when it’s warm enough weather.”
“Tiger’s a bit funny in his ways, Mr. Holmes,” Wilcox interjected, and Tiger chewed on his lower lip to suppress his irritation.
“I daresay the same thing was said about me at your age,” Holmes said lightly. Tiger was pleased to think that he had something in common with the famous detective and relaxed a bit more. “Now, Tiger,” Holmes continued, extracting a pipe and a bag of tobacco from the inner pocket of his coat. “I’d like you to tell me everything you can remember about last night, from the time that you left this cottage to the time that you woke up this morning, in as much detail as possible.”
Tiger nodded and glanced briefly up at the two men. Watson was relaxed and gave him another easy smile; Holmes’s eyes flickered back and forth between Tiger’s face and the pipe which he had thrust down into the bag of tobacco and was adroitly packing with one hand. Tiger noticed that there was less candlepower in the detective’s look now, as if he were also more at ease, but nevertheless Tiger thought he could see a ceaselessly calculating awareness in his limpid gray eyes.
“I was a shy lad, too,” Holmes said, meeting Tiger’s gaze, his odd little grin lingering longer at the edges of his thin lips. “Take your time. I shall only interrupt if a question arises.” Although Tiger was still intimidated by the detective’s fame and discomfited by his strange, unreadable presence, he could sense neither the latent cruelty nor the dismissive condescension that tainted most of his interactions with other adults. Holmes struck a match and lit his clay pipe with long, nimble fingers, shaking the match out with a lazily elegant wave of his hand and throwing it at the nearby hearth. After making a vague gesture in Tiger’s direction, Holmes leaned back in the settee and crossed his long, skinny legs at the knee, puffing silently on his pipe.
In a halting, timid voice Tiger began to tell of the strange event that befell him in the stables the night before. At Holmes’s urging he recounted every detail that he could recall, even though it made him feel silly - especially since Holmes barely seemed to be paying attention. Throughout Tiger’s narrative the detective sat smoking meditatively with his eyes closed, opening them halfway only to ask a laconic question before lowering his lids once again. It wasn’t until Tiger was almost at the end of his tale that Holmes seemed to rouse himself.
“I was patting Lionheart and getting ready to go back up to the loft when Lionheart heard something, and I turned to listen and that’s when I heard someone at the door,” Tiger explained.
“What was the very first sound that you heard?” Holmes asked.
“Someone walking on the gravel, close to the stables. Then I heard someone start opening the door.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No, sir,” Tiger replied with a shake of his tousled head. “As soon as I heard someone coming, I hid in the stall. Er, in the back corner, where it was darkest.”
“Why did you hide if it is well known that you often sleep up in the loft?”
Tiger looked bashfully down at the carpet and gave a single shrug of one shoulder. He realized that he himself wasn’t quite sure why he had hidden; it had simply been his instinct to do so. “I s’pose I didn’t want to be seen,” Tiger mumbled at last.
“That’s quite alright. Pray continue,” Holmes urged. He had finished his pipe and stuck it back into his pocket without knocking out the bowl before resuming his former repose.
“Ehm…” Tiger said, momentarily caught off guard when Holmes didn’t question him further about what he felt was his own inexplicable behavior. “I saw a light coming down the stalls…It seemed too bright to be a candle, so I thought they must’ve had a lantern.”
“Did you hear them light it?”
Tiger shook his head. “There was some noises by the door,” he said slowly, thinking aloud, “but not like a match…”
“What did the noises sound like, Tiger?” Holmes asked, raising his eyelids halfway. Nothing had changed in his outward appearance, but Tiger felt a curious sense of gathering stillness in the detective’s demeanor.
“They sounded like…like footsteps, maybe, but not like his footsteps,” Tiger replied, struggling to explain what he was hearing in his memory.
“Whose footsteps?”
“Master Tipton’s. They weren’t his footsteps, or I didn’t think they were, because they sounded…I don’t know, wrong when he walked past.”
“Wrong how, Tiger?” Holmes queried quietly.
Tiger was momentarily taken aback by the abrupt change that had come over the detective. Like a lightning rod, Holmes seemed to be drawing in a weird, crackling energy that filled up the entire room until even the furniture felt as if it had begun to vibrate at a higher frequency. Holmes’s imperious, glittering eyes bored into Tiger, holding him spellbound like a cobra swaying before its prey.
“It’s alright, Tiger,” Watson said quietly, giving the boy a sympathetic little nod and smile.
“It sounded like Master Tipton was dragging his feet, sir,” Tiger finally managed to say, trying to ignore the way his words only seemed to heighten Sherlock Holmes’s resonant frequency. “Or like he’d forgotten to tie his boot laces.”
“Do you keep a pair of mucking galoshes in the stables, Mr. Wilcox?” Holmes demanded of the groom, and Tiger breathed a sigh of relief as he felt himself no longer subject to scrutiny by the concentrated beam of the detective’s lighthouse gaze.
“Certainly, Mr. Holmes, right by the door,” Wilcox said, visibly uncomfortable to be the center of attention.
“By Jove, Watson, out of the mouth of babes!” Holmes cried, slapping his knee and springing to his feet so suddenly that Tiger flinched, instinctively clutching the arms of the chair as if ready to vault himself out of it. “If you’ll be good enough to accompany us back to the stables, Mr. Wilcox, I believe your rather surprising young tiger cub has given me the answer to this little puzzle. Come, Watson!”
With that Sherlock Holmes turned on his heel, his black Inverness cape swirling around his legs like a cloud of smoke, and swept out of the cottage at top speed, leaving the door hanging open in his wake.
Watson, who had already risen to his feet and donned the derby hat he had been holding in his lap, flashed Tiger an apologetic look. “Thank you for your help, my boy,” he murmured somewhat awkwardly and, first pausing to retrieve Holmes’s top hat from a small deal table in the entryway, rushed out of the cottage after his unnerving companion with Wilcox bringing up the rear.
Tiger sat numbly in the precipitate silence, watching the lean figure of Sherlock Holmes striding up the stable path on his long stork’s legs, his cape billowing behind him in the gusting autumn wind. Tiger was too bemused just then to untangle the swarm of thoughts and feelings that were buzzing in his brain. He only knew that Holmes was wildly but ineffably different than the character he’d imagined while poring over the newspapers and magazines, and for that reason the sleuth fascinated Tiger all the more. Holmes’s darkly engulfing aura had been atonal and alien, but there had been brief moments when it seemed to Tiger that he and the detective had resonated in a silent, secret harmony. It had been a novel experience for Tiger which he sensed had marked him in some indelible way, although whether for good or for ill he knew not.
Having been given no instructions regarding what to do with himself and in no hurry to locate Freddy, Tiger resigned himself to waiting at the cottage for Wilcox’s return. He suddenly felt wrung out from the day’s excitement and grumpy about his day having been so discombobulated; he dreaded having to set right the stables, where nothing would be the way it ought for a workday evening. Most of all he felt lonely for Lionheart, and for this reason his heart leapt hopefully when he saw Wilcox leading Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson out of the stables not ten minutes after they had entered. As Tiger watched, Holmes led the trio off down the path towards the big house, gesticulating enthusiastically to Watson at his side.
Impulsively Tiger leapt up from the chair and dashed out of the parlor, down the hall, and through the kitchen, where he exited through the back door into the garden. In order to avoid meeting the men on their way down the path, he struck off in an arc around a large interposing copse of trees which provided him cover most of the way to the stables.
He was there in the exercise yard almost an hour later, quietly brushing Lionheart in the quickly gathering dusk when he was startled by an unfamiliar voice from the stable doorway.
“He’s out here in the yard, Holmes.”
Tiger turned to see the lean frame of Sherlock Holmes emerge beside Watson in the wide stable doorway. “I’m relieved to hear it,” he said, striding across the yard towards Tiger with Watson at his side. “I thought you might be up in the loft, and a climb up that Jacobean ladder is an unpleasant thing for a grown man to contemplate.”
“This must be Lionheart,” Watson said, gesturing at the gentle old thoroughbred who was nudging Tiger’s arm impatiently.
“Yes, sir.”
Tiger watched as Holmes approached the horse and stroked its nose. All of the weird, frenetic energy had left the detective and the smile that he bestowed upon Tiger lingered longer on his angular face. “He is a rather fine old chap,” Holmes said as he let Lionheart lip his palm.
“Yes, sir,” Tiger answered with quiet pride, happy that the famous Sherlock Holmes would appreciate his friend.
“You did your master a great service today, Tiger,” Holmes said, reaching into the pocket of his cape. “Should you ever find yourself in London, I am likely to have work for a boy as bright as yourself.” He extended his hand and placed into Tiger’s hesitant palm a crisp white card and a sovereign. Tiger looked down at both in wonder. Beneath the dully glowing coin the printed script on the card read: Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, 221B Baker St, London.
“Thank you, sir,” Tiger mumbled, clutching the sovereign tightly in his fist. It was more money than he had ever possessed at one time. Holmes tipped his hat at Tiger before turning away and walking back towards the stables.
“Well done, Tiger,” Watson said, ruffling the boy’s hair affectionately before following Holmes back to the stables.
The Five Yews was never the same for Tiger after that day. The murder of Harold Tipton and subsequent arrest of Mrs. Tipton and her paramour threw the estate into disarray; it was widely expected that the family would sell, and Tiger didn’t relish the prospect of getting used to new employers who might not be so lenient with his “funny ways,” as Wilcox had put it. Getting to meet Sherlock Holmes and becoming involved in one of his investigations had also made the Five Yews seem hopelessly small and boring. Tiger had gotten a glimpse of the kind of adventures that might await him in London, and the allure of Baker Street grew daily stronger.
Therefore it was that on his last free day in February Tiger packed his meager belongings in his knapsack, said a private and tearful goodbye to Lionheart, collected his wages, and took the train into London on the pretense of wanting to buy a book. As he had done this two or three times in the past, Wilcox never suspected that when Tiger left the estate that day he had no intention of ever coming back.
He set out early in the morning and reached Baker Street by the afternoon. As Tiger stood across the street from 221, gazing up at the windows and wondering which one belonged to Sherlock Holmes, his slender body was nearly vibrating from nervous excitement. With his eyes glued on the deceptively ordinary black door ahead and his mind already lost in the daring adventures he might have with the celebrated crime solver, Tiger stepped off the sidewalk and into the roadway. He never saw the driver lose control of his cab down the street. The last thing that Tiger knew was a voice crying Someone grab the bloody reins, then he felt a tremendous pain on his right side and everything went black.