After leaving Buckingham Palace, Russell made his way to Fleet Street.
He hadn't used any of the clever little gadgets he'd prepared in advance. Instead, he'd swung the entire way back on the grappling hook gun.
The Palace's security tonight had turned out to be nowhere near as tight as he'd imagined.
Which meant the Teleport Anchor he'd pre-positioned on Baker Street had gone to waste — not that he was particularly worried about that.
He still had to return the music box in his possession before long, after all.
Once tomorrow's morning papers ran the story of his infiltration of Buckingham Palace, getting back inside was going to be considerably less straightforward. So before he'd left, he'd spent a fresh batch of Malice Points on a brand-new anchor and planted it on his way out — for next time.
One fan meet-and-greet down, and another still to go.
Tonight's schedule really was packed to the brim.
Russell drew a slow breath. He reached into his pocket and weighed what lay inside: every piece of evidence he had gathered over the past seven days — and one small souvenir he'd casually helped himself to on his way out of the Palace.
Then he stepped up onto the monument.
There, in the very heart of Fleet Street, stood a cast-iron dragon several metres tall. Russell climbed to its back, raised a megaphone to his lips, and cleared his throat.
"Ahem..." He drew a deep breath, lifted the megaphone, and let his voice carry.
"Good evening, Fleet Street."
The sound, amplified and flung across the silence of the deep night, crashed through the drowsy stillness of the street like a thunderclap.
"Your good friend, your good neighbour — Moriarty — has come to deliver your Christmas presents!"
In an instant, Fleet Street seemed to freeze.
Every editor, every reporter, every sub-editor — every single person — stopped dead in their tracks at precisely that moment.
They had been waiting the entire night.
The waiting had begun the moment the clock ticked past midnight the night before.
They had been waiting for the curtain to rise on whatever spectacle Moriarty had promised them.
They had waited from daylight into darkness, from sunrise to sunset — and had seen nothing, heard nothing, not a single word connected to him.
Just when every last person had decided they'd been played for fools, the voice finally came — fashionably, maddeningly late, arriving precisely as they were on the verge of giving up.
Every head snapped upward at once. The bloodshot, exhausted eyes that met the sound moved first through bewilderment and absurdity — and then, in the very next heartbeat, were consumed by wild, delirious fervour.
"Good God — it's Moriarty!"
Someone shouted it first. No one could say who.
And just like that, Fleet Street erupted — the whole street surging like a lake struck by a boulder, boiling over in an instant.
"Move! Get to the roof!"
"Photographer! Where the hell is the photographer?! Get me that bloody flash lamp!"
"There — on the monument!"
The newspaper buildings, every window blazing with light only moments before, became a hive struck open. Countless figures thrust their heads from windows; others poured straight out through the front doors in a surging flood.
They craned their necks back, gazing toward the great iron dragon at the centre of the street with an expression that was equal parts reverence and rapture — the look of pilgrims who had finally reached their shrine.
And there, atop that snarling beast of black iron, a figure that had not been there before.
He wore a well-tailored black coat. He wore that unmistakable white mask. In the cold light of the moon, he stood alone and apart — like a midnight god who had descended to walk among mortals.
Camera flashes burst like a dense scatter of stars from every corner of the street, all of them firing frantically, all of them trying to capture this historic moment.
The roar of the crowd, the rapid-fire click of shutters, the incoherent shouting of reporters too overcome to form words — it all came together into one extraordinary symphony, composed entirely in honour of the Phantom Thief.
This was their first time seeing Moriarty in the flesh.
Even masked, even cloaked, even with his face hidden completely — it didn't matter.
Russell stood on the crest of that towering monument and looked down at the uproar surging below him — an uproar he had made. Beneath the mask, the corner of his mouth curved into a line of quiet satisfaction.
This was the moment he had been waiting for.
"Quiet."
He raised the megaphone again. His voice was not loud — but it reached every single person with perfect clarity.
The clamour, miraculous as it seemed, fell away. The whole street went still.
Every breath held, every face tilted upward, every pair of eyes fixed on that solitary figure standing in the heights like the lead actor in a stage play — waiting for his next line.
"My dear friends of the press," Russell's voice drifted through the megaphone and rolled across the quiet night sky, "and all of you, equally dear, who labour so diligently to keep this city turning."
He paused, and a note of perfectly calibrated dry amusement entered his voice.
"I must apologise for dragging you out of your warm offices on such a cold night."
Another pause.
"But I trust you won't begrudge a little overtime — not for a grand performance that is just about to begin. Will you?"
A wave of suppressed, genuinely warm laughter broke across the crowd.
"Not at all!" one reporter hollered back at the top of his lungs.
"Then — without further ado."
Russell tossed the megaphone aside without ceremony, letting it plummet from that great height into the crowd below, drawing a ripple of startled gasps and nervous laughter.
Then, with all eyes upon him, he slipped his hand into the inner breast pocket of his coat.
Every heart in Fleet Street rose into every throat at that moment.
They didn't know what was in that pocket. But they knew — whatever it was — it would be the hottest headline in all of London tonight, and for the week to come.
Russell drew out, slowly and deliberately, a thick sheaf of papers.
Bribery Records belonging to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A smuggling ledger kept by a business magnate. Scandalous letters exchanged between an Earl and his daughter-in-law.
Seven days of work, slipping through the wealthy districts of London — and here it all was, resting quietly in the palm of his hand.
Every sheet of paper represented a scandal powerful enough to make high society tremble.
Every sheet of paper was heavy enough to bring a distinguished family to its knees.
"Here is your overtime pay——"
He announced it softly — barely above a murmur — and yet it detonated in every ear like a thunderclap.
And then, as every eye stared in disbelief, Russell opened his hand.
That entire stack of evidence — enough to shake London to its foundations — he scattered into the night sky like a man sowing seeds.
"Let the curtain rise!"
Countless yellowed sheets of paper took to the air like butterflies suddenly given life, spinning and wheeling and drifting on the night wind.
They floated down toward the street, toward the crowd, toward the outstretched hands trembling as they reached upward.
The crowd went completely mad.
The reporters flung themselves at the falling pages like sharks that had scented blood — snatching, shoving, crying out — driving the scene to an absolute peak of beautiful, glorious chaos.
But even as every eye was drawn upward to those swirling papers, something else had appeared in his hand.
A small snuffbox — compact and exquisite — cast in pure gold and set with a scattering of tiny rubies.
Its craftsmanship was extraordinary. On the lid, engraved in crisp, unmistakable lines, was the Royal Cipher.
Even from a considerable distance, those among the crowd with sharp enough eyes took one look at that snuffbox — and understood immediately.
This was property of Buckingham Palace.
Russell turned the snuffbox between his fingers, letting the cold metal slide across his fingertips.
He said nothing. He needed to say nothing. The gesture alone announced it to everyone present — silently, and without any possible misreading.
It announced that tonight's performance had been a success.
Then he tossed the priceless snuffbox into the crowd below — casually, the way one might flick away a pebble that had served its purpose.
With that, Russell dusted off his hands with a satisfied air, like an artist stepping back from a completed masterpiece and preparing to take his leave.
He cast one last look at the vivid, churning spectacle below him — and beneath the mask, the corner of his mouth curved.
"And so — good night, Fleet Street."
He said it softly, then swept a perfectly elegant bow toward the crowd below.
The instant the words left his lips, at the Phantom Thief's feet, a cloud of black smoke bloomed silently into existence.
"Pfft!"
That familiar sound — the soft report that always signalled the fall of the curtain.
The smoke billowed out and swallowed every line of sight at once.
By the time the reporters shook themselves free of their frenzy and turned their eyes back toward the iron dragon, there was nothing left to see.
Only cold moonlight, falling silently onto that mute, frozen monument of black iron.
As though everything that had just happened were nothing more than a grand and ludicrous dream, conjured collectively by the fevered minds of Fleet Street.
Only the evidence scattered across the ground — clutched tight in countless hands — and that small, radiant snuffbox passing from grip to grip through the crowd — whispered, without words, that it had all been real.
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