Holmes yanked open the door, yelping as he gripped a handle that was already too hot. Smoke rolled in, stinging our eyes and forcing us back.
Covering his mouth with the cabbie’s cap, Holmes strode into the thick cloud, almost disappearing from view. I followed, peering down the stairwell, the glow of the flames flickering from below.
“Come on,” Holmes shouted, charging down the stairs straight into the inferno.
“Are you mad?” I shouted after him. “Those steps were treacherous enough before!”
“Somehow I can’t see either of us throwing ourselves out of a window,” he called back, coughing on the fumes. “Not in our current condition.”
Grudgingly I was forced to agree, and began my own descent, barely able to see, so thick was the smoke. It needed only another rotten step and we would tumble down into the blaze.
My chest felt heavy and I struggled for breath as we passed the first floor landing to turn down to the lobby. Holmes stopped abruptly and I did not need to ask him why. Flames were dancing along the lobby floor, blistering already blackened paintwork on the walls and spreading up to meet us. Our escape route was well and truly blocked. We would never make it to the bottom step, let alone the front door.
“Back upstairs,” Holmes commanded.
“But you said—”
“Save your breath.”
I wanted to stop. I wanted to sink to the steps and wait for the inevitable. I knew such thoughts were tantamount to suicide, but it felt that my lungs were about to burst and I could barely see. The heat was unlike anything I had ever experienced, the smell unbearable; but the noise? That is what you never understand about fires until you are standing in the heart of one. The crackling. The roaring.
“Watson! Come on!”
I couldn’t give up. We were at each other’s side once more, as we had always been. Holmes and Watson. As close as any brothers.
Grabbing the banister, I took the first step, and then another. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck singe, imagined the skin blistering, sparks catching my coat, but I ran, not as Mycroft had hoped I would, but towards escape, one step at a time.
“That’s it, Watson,” Holmes said, as I wheezed onto the first floor landing. “Almost there.”
“Almost where?”
“I’m a fool,” was his only reply.
“What do you mean?”
He pushed open the doors.
“Give me your torch.”
It was a miracle I hadn’t dropped it in my flight. I passed it to him and he swept it across what little we could see of the floor.
“This way,” he half-choked, pulling me to the right. I stumbled blindly after him, until we reached a door at the end of the corridor. He flung it open and we found ourselves standing in a small box-like room.
“No!” Holmes cursed, stepping back into the smoke-filled corridor. “It must be here somewhere.”
“What are you looking for?” I spluttered, blinded by the smoke, although I could hear Holmes running his hands along the walls.
“This,” came the triumphant cry, accompanied by the opening of a door. A hand emerged from the murk, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me forward. I cried out as pain lanced up my arm, but found myself in an enclosed stairwell that was thankfully free of smoke. The flight curved around a service elevator that would be useless without power, but the stairs themselves were still passable. Holmes was already racing down them, and I followed suit, holding onto the handrail as if my life depended on it, which it probably did. Smoke billowed up the shaft like a chimney, but there was no sign of flames save for an ominous glow from the gap beneath an already steaming internal door.
We reached the bottom, and spied another door. Holmes tried the handle, only to find it locked. He handed me the torch, but before I could ask him his intentions he surprised me by drawing a revolver from his belt and firing once, twice, three times into the lock. The noise was deafening, even above the clamour of the blaze, and I threw up a hand to protect my face from flying wooden shrapnel.
Holmes threw his weight against the door, tumbling forward as it flew open. I cried out, rushing forward to help him up, only to find the man flat on his back, laughing hysterically. I felt cool air on my face and saw the sky above us. We were out.
Struggling to my feet, I stood over my amused companion.
“What the devil is wrong with you, Holmes?”
He grabbed my forearm and, placing more strain on my already near-ruined shoulder, levered himself up. “Twice this building has tried to kill us, Watson, and twice we have escaped.”
“We’re not clear yet,” I said, looking around. We were in a tiny loading yard, trolleys that would have once housed piles of linen overturned against a six-foot wall. “How do we get out?”
“Down here,” Holmes said, pointing out a tiny alleyway that ran along the side of the burning building. I cast the light of the torch down the passage, noting with dismay a wooden door that blocked our exit. Holmes limped down to investigate and, rattling the barricade, realised that it was locked from the other side.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked, hobbling up behind him. “Use your gun again!”
“That is the unmistakable sound of a padlock,” Holmes said, pushing past me, back into the yard. “Even if I were at the height of my powers, striking a lock through a solid door would be a trick shot worthy of Wild Bill Hickok.”
“Then how will we get out? We can’t go through the blaze again.”
“Indeed we can’t. Help me with this,” Holmes said, trying to raise one of the trolleys back onto its castors.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Watson, please,” my friend croaked. “My resources are wearing dangerously thin. I haven’t the strength by myself.”
Pocketing the torch, I joined Holmes and manhandled the trolley upright. We rattled it over to the passageway and, lining it up with the locked door, gave each other one last look. From somewhere in the building there came an almighty crash as a floor or ceiling gave way. Grinning despite myself, I looked into Holmes’s soot-covered features.
“This is why my wife doesn’t like me spending time with you,” I said.
“Nonsense,” came the reply. “It keeps you out from under her feet.”
With a cry born chiefly of desperation, Holmes and I charged down the alley, pushing the trolley with all our might. It crashed into the door, the impact causing both of us to cry out in pain, although there was no time to nurse either shoulder or ribs. Instead, we pulled back and let fly again, like soldiers of old attempting to batter down the gates of a castle.
This time the door gave a little more, wood splintering. At last, on the third attempt, the latch sprang open. The trolley trundled through the open door and Holmes had to catch me before I fell flat on my face.
We staggered around the side of the building, like drunkards returning from a night in a gin palace. We stopped only when we reached the riverbank, turning to gaze at the flames that were claiming the ruined hospital from within.
Flames that had very nearly claimed us as well.