'Stop the motor and let me off,' he cried. 'I'm going to wake up the nearest magistrate and confess.'
'You'll do nothing of the sort,' said Doyle. 'Don't you see that no person on earth would suspect two criminals of making for London when they have the whole country before them? Haven't you read my stories?
The moment a man commits a crime he tries to get as far away from London as possible. Every policeman knows that, therefore, two men coming into London are innocent strangers, according to Scotland Yard.'
'But then we may be taken up for fast driving, and think of the terrible burden we carry.'
'We're safe on the country roads, and I'll slow down when we reach the suburbs.'
It was approaching three o'clock in the morning when a huge motor car turned out of Trafalgar Square, and went eastward along the Strand.
The northern side of the Strand was up, as it usually is, and the motor, skilfully driven, glided past the piles of wood-paving blocks, great sombre kettles holding tar and the general _debris_ of a re-paving convulsion. Opposite Southampton Street, at the very spot so graphically illustrated by George C. Haite on the cover of the _Strand Magazine_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stopped his motor. The Strand was deserted. He threw pick and shovel into the excavation, and curtly ordered his companion to take his choice of weapons. Sir George selected the pick, and Doyle vigorously plied the spade. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, a very respectable hole had been dug, and in it was placed the body of the popular private detective.
Just as the last spadeful was shovelled in place the stern voice of a policeman awoke the silence, and caused Sir George to drop his pick from nerveless hands.
'What are you two doing down there?'
'That's all right, officer,' said Doyle glibly, as one who had foreseen every emergency. 'My friend here is controller of the Strand.
When the Strand is up he is responsible, and it has the largest circulation in the--I mean it's up oftener than any other street in the world. We cannot inspect the work satisfactorily while traffic is on, and so we have been examining it in the night-time. I am his secretary; I do the writing, you know.'
'Oh, I see,' replied the constable. 'Well, gentlemen, good morning to you, and merry Christmas.'
'The same to you, constable. Just lend a hand, will you?'
The officer of the law helped each of the men up to the level of the road.
As Doyle drove away from the ill-omened spot he said:--
'Thus have we disposed of poor Holmes in the busiest spot on earth, where no one will ever think of looking for him, and we've put him away without even a Christmas box around him. We have buried him for ever in the _Strand_.'