opened and shut from time to time, and they trickled down his face.”
Moran assumed a mournful expression and indicated the trickling tears with his fingers.
“Then his mountainous frame quivered convulsively, and he fell over on his side and expired.”
Even from his gang of admirers there was silence. Were they as sickened by this narrative as I was? There was a murmured question at last and Moran replied.
“Fortunately, the ivory tusks weighed ninety pounds a-piece. I believe they fetched more than enough to set-off the cost of the day’s expedition.”
He took his smouldering cigar from the brass finger ring on the counter, where it had rested as he reminisced. He puffed it bright again and rested it again once more as he talked. I do not know how he chose his victim; but a little while later, as the group moved away, he called to one of the young women who had turned aside to watch a juggler on his stand. She was dressed like a servant by comparison with the rest.
“Be so good as to fetch me that new ring, m’dear.”
She turned to pick up the metal circlet and dropped it again with a little gasp of pain, feeling the heated metal where the cigar had glowed against it. Moran gave a short laugh, and one or two of the others who had seen the trick coming chuckled obediently, for no great harm seemed to have been done.
“Dogs and women, Archie,” he said to one of the older men: “no other way to teach ’em but hard experience. Eh?”
Such was Rawdon Moran. I was appalled and a little frightened by the extent of his callousness. Was this our self-proclaimed adversary? Of course he was a marksman, but I did not fear him for that. Even if he saw me, he could hardly shoot me dead on Epsom Downs. Of course he was a scoundrel, but Holmes and I had dealt with scoundrels. He was not a convicted criminal, but he was something worse than most convicts. At that moment, I would have bet my last sovereign that he had been responsible for the death of Joshua Sellon. Yet no court and no grand jury would have found an indictment against him on the present evidence. What spread from him, almost like a pestilence tainting the air around him, was a breath of self-confident evil.
Despite what he had done to destroy men and women, it was his tale of the bull elephant and his ridicule of its death which had moved me most. Sherlock Holmes, who had seen enough of crime and criminals in all conscience, was almost eccentric in his detestation of cruelty to the animal kingdom. He would more readily defend a murderer than a man who hunted a wild creature to its death as a matter of amusement. It was a small part of his make-up, but one that I now understood more surely than I had ever done before.
I drew out my watch and saw that there was almost an hour to go before my rendezvous with Holmes. What was I to do, except keep out of sight of our adversary? Moran had looked in my direction. He did not appear to see me, or recognise me if he did see me. I could not be sure. Was it merely a coincidence that he was on Epsom Downs? Or had someone been tracking me all the time on his behalf? Would he know who I was?
I felt sure he would have heard that Holmes and I had visited Brother Mycroft and, perhaps, Carlyle Mansions. He might not have been in England long enough to recognise me for himself, but I could not count on that. I must also assume that he knew of our visitors to Baker Street and of any correspondence we received. My best hope must be that he would not have expected to see me among the crowds at Epsom. If he did not expect it, then he might not have picked me out. I had kept my back to him at first. I had not turned round until I was behind the corner of the rifle range.
In truth, I could not be sure of anything. For safety’s sake, the best solution was to keep under cover. From where I stood, the fairground stretched as far as the eye could see, giving me ample choice. It was not likely that Moran and his admirers would crowd into one of the family side-shows. It would