The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls Read Online Free Page A

done with her game.
    “Your hair has only just begun to thin on top,” Anna says, adding, “Baldness is becoming in an older man.”
    “As you say, I am becoming bald.”
    “A clever fellow, you are. Aware of the shape of things.” Anna brightened, nodding decisively. “And in your mid-forties, I would guess.”
    “A medical person, are you?” I ask.
    She shakes her head. “A keen observer is all. You are slightly taller than Thomas, who is slightly taller than I, and so you must be five foot eleven.”
    “And ten stone, soaking wet.”
    She proceeds as if I haven’t spoken. “You are a man of importance.”
    “Now, how do you know that?”
    She lifts her eyebrows. “How else would you have ended up in the river?”
    “I don’t see your meaning.”
    “Someone was stalking you. Only important men get stalked.”
    “Stalking me?”
    Her mouth drops open. “Oh … we didn’t tell you, did we … ?”
    “Tell me what?”
    Anna pauses, and her eyes flit as if seeking escape. “Apparently … someone threw you … or pushed you … from the top of the Reichenbach Falls.”
    A frisson of dread tingles up my spine. I don’t even know who I am, but there is a man out there—an enemy—who does. “Who was it? Who threw me down?”
    Anna glances at her feet. “I don’t know. I only glimpsed you two, fighting each other atop the falls, and then … and then you were falling.”
    “What of the other man?”
    A shout comes from beyond the carriage—a distant but angry sound. Anna leans toward the window and glances out. She cranes her neck to see the height of the cliff, and her hand tightens on the windowsill. “That’s the man.”
    I drop to my knees beside Anna and look toward the cliff’s edge. A man stands there—narrow and angry like a scarecrow. He holds a walking stick, and he is shouting something down at us.
    “What’s he saying?”
    “I don’t know,” Anna responds. She reaches over our heads to a hatch in the ceiling and props it open. “Thomas, can you tell what he’s saying?”
    Thomas leans down, his face red and worried in the hatch. “He says stop or he’ll shoot. What with, I can’t tell—unless that walking stick isn’t a walking stick.” Thomas’s face tightens as he draws on the reins. The horse slows.
    “You can’t stop. He wants to kill me.”
    “Right.” Thomas whips the reins, and the mare picks up her pace. The carriage lurches down the road. “Another fifty feet, and we’ll be behind a bend, out of the line of fire.”
Thomas suddenly grimaces, and a second later I hear the profound boom of a rifle shot.
    Thomas slumps forward onto the roof of the hansom, his eyes bulging and his cheeks swollen. The carriage veers toward the precipice.
    “Look out!” I shout.
    The sound rouses Thomas, and he looks up, tugging at the reins to bring the horse back in line. He grits his teeth, eyes riveted to the road. “I’ve been shot!” His left shoulder is mantled in blood.
    I look up to the gunman, seeing him run atop the cliff. “He’s following us!” The man has a tall, knifelike form. He plants his feet and levels his strange rifle, and a gray puff of smoke comes from it. I yank my head back from the window, and a bullet ricochets off the metal sill and careens past my ear to punch through the compartment and clip the horse’s haunch.
    The mare panics, rushing away at full gallop. Thomas grips the reins in both hands and struggles to stay upright. His eyes flutter with pain. He swoons.
    I reach up through the hatch and grip Thomas’s shirt, managing to hold him in the seat.
    “The horse is loose!” Anna shouts, pointing to the reins that flap furiously beside the cab. “It’ll run us into the river!”
    “Reach up through here and hold Thomas. I’ll try to get control.”
    Anna extends her arm through the hatch and grabs Thomas’s shirt. As soon as she has a solid hold, I let go of him and lunge for the carriage door.
    The hansom is rocking terribly, the