Sherlock Holmes In Montague Street Volume 2 by David Marcum

enigmatical forebodings, the mysterious tracking of the man with the broken shoe, the scene round the gypsies’ fire, and now the strange behavior of this man, whose connection with the tragedy was so intimate and yet so inexplicable - all these things contributed to make up a tale of but a few hours’ duration, but of an inscrutable impressiveness that I began to feel in my nerves.
    The man bent a thin stick double, and using it as a pair of tongs, held some indistinguishable object over the flames before him. Excited as I was, I could not help noticing that he bent and held the stick with his left hand. We crept stealthily nearer, and as I stood scarcely three yards behind him and looked over his shoulder, the form of the object stood out clear and black against the dull red of the flame. It was a human hand .
    I suppose I may have somehow betrayed my amazement and horror to my companion’s sharp eyes, for suddenly I felt his hand tightly grip my arm just above the elbow. I turned, and found his face close by mine and his finger raised warningly. Then I saw him produce his wrist-grip and make a motion with his palm toward his mouth, which I understood to be intended to remind me of the gag. We stepped forward.
    The man turned his horrible cookery over and over above the crackling sticks, as though to smoke and dry it in every part. I saw Holmes’s hand reach out toward him, and in a flash we had pulled him back over his heels and I had driven the gag between his teeth as he opened his mouth. We seized his wrists in the cords at once, and I shall never forget the man’s look of ghastly, frantic terror as he lay on the ground. When I knew more I understood the reason of this.
    Holmes took both wrist-holds in one hand and drove the gag entirely into the man’s mouth, so that he almost choked. A piece of sacking lay near the fire, and by Holmes’s request I dropped that awful hand from the wooden twigs upon it and rolled it up in a parcel - it was, no doubt, what the sacking had been brought for. Then we lifted the man to his feet and hurried him in the direction of the cart. The whole capture could not have occupied thirty seconds, and as I stumbled over the rough field at the man’s left elbow I could only think of the thing as one thinks of a dream that one knows all the time is a dream.
    But presently the man, who had been walking quietly, though gasping, sniffing and choking because of the tightly rolled handkerchief in his mouth - presently he made a sudden dive, thinking doubtless to get his wrists free by surprise. But Holmes was alert, and gave them a twist that made him roll his head with a dismal, stifled yell, and with the opening of his mouth, by some chance the gag fell away. Immediately the man roared aloud for help.
    â€œQuick,” said Holmes, “drag him along - they’ll hear in the vans. Bring the hand!”
    I seized the fallen handkerchief and crammed it over the man’s mouth as well as I might, and together we made as much of a trot as we could, dragging the man between us, while Holmes checked any reluctance on his part by a timely wrench of the wristholds. It was a hard two hundred and fifty yards to the lane even for us - for the gipsy it must have been a bad minute and a half indeed. Once more as we went over the uneven ground he managed to get out a shout, and we thought we heard a distinct reply from somewhere in the direction of the encampment.
    We pulled him over a stile in a tangle; and dragged and pushed him through a small hedge-gap all in a heap. Here we were but a short distance from the cart, and into that we flung him without wasting time or tenderness, to the intense consternation of the driver, who, I believe, very nearly set up a cry for help on his own account. Once in the cart, however, I seized the reins and the whip myself and, leaving Holmes to take care of the prisoner, put the turn-out along toward Ratherby at as near ten miles an hour