“We could lie again and say we made a mistake.”
“That would hardly incline Lestrade to look on us with favour.”
“What if we claimed it was Gregson who had made the mistake? You told me the two of them are rivals. Lestrade might leap at the opportunity to show his fellow inspector in a bad light.”
“They are, I admit, as jealous of each other as a pair of professional beauties,” Holmes said, “but they are also, all said and done, both Scotland Yarders, policemen to the core. Their loyalty to each other may be tenuous but their loyalty to the law supersedes all other concerns. Lestrade would check with Gregson first to see if our allegation held water. He would find it did not, and we would be back where we started, and perhaps even deeper in the mire. No, Watson, seeking police assistance is fruitless in this instance. As is, it seems, any other course of action. I fear that I have met with my first real failure – so early in my career, too – and an innocent life will be the price.”
I could think of nothing further to say that might stir him from his torpor and rally his spirits. The outlook for him was as bleak as the grey sky outside which since dawn had been sending down a thin wintry drizzle onto the rooftops and streets. Breakfast arrived, and I ate desultorily and Holmes not at all.
Then, an hour later, came the clangour of the doorbell, and into our rooms stepped a lean, dark-eyed, ferret-faced little fellow who was known to Holmes but not to me. It was, it so happened, one of the two men we had previously been discussing. Inspector Lestrade cut an altogether more lugubrious figure than Gregson. The latter had a puppyish eagerness about him. Lestrade was subdued and serious, and spoke with a faintly adenoidal whine which carried more than a hint of officiousness.
After he and I had been introduced and my bona fides as Holmes’s companion had been established, Lestrade said, “My apologies, Mr Holmes, for the intrusion. I’m loath to disturb you on—”
Holmes cut him off. “Out with it, man. Say what you have to.”
Lestrade was taken aback by the abruptness, but soldiered on. “This is, strictly speaking, a police matter, but I felt you should be included, if only because you and the person concerned have an association.”
“And also because, not to put too fine a point on it, you are stumped. I see the way you clutch the brim of your bowler and rotate the hat in your hands. It is one of your tics, Lestrade, a mannerism that invariably attends an admission from you that you have drawn a blank in an investigation. Then there is the dampness of the hat’s crown, the extent of which tells me that you have been out in this inclement weather since first light. Why would that be unless you were scouring the streets on some protracted and ultimately unsuccessful errand? Finally, the very fact that you are here leads me to deduce that you need my help on a case on which you have made little or no headway yourself.”
“Yes, well, there is all that.” Lestrade looked somewhat shamefaced. “It’s Inspector Gregson, you see.”
Holmes straightened in his seat, his lethargy receding. For the first time that day he appeared to have some energy. “What of him?”
“He is gone.”
“Gone?”
“He has not reported in at work for two days running,” said Lestrade. “We have received no notification from him that he is ill or otherwise indisposed. I sent a constable round to his flat in Battersea first thing yesterday morning to see if he was home. The man received no answer to his knock, and when he managed to gain ingress to the property by shinning up the drainpipe and climbing in through an unlatched window – which was quite improper of him, I might add, and he shall be disciplined for it – he found the place empty. No sign of Gregson, but neither of anything untoward.”
“You mean no indication that he had packed a bag, or that he had been abducted after a struggle.”
“Just so. The flat was spick and span. The bed was made, the sitting room tidy, there was no unwashed crockery in the sink, nothing to suggest he had been forced to leave in a hurry or against his will.”
Holmes unfurled his long legs and leaned forward, elbows on thighs, fingers steepled. “If he lives in a flat, then there must be other tenants in the building. Were they aware of any comings and goings?”
“The constable made the appropriate enquiries. The elderly couple on the ground floor said they had heard Gregson leave by the front door on the morning of the twenty-ninth, Wednesday, at the usual time. The solicitor’s clerk on the top floor confirmed it. It is as though Gregson stepped out to catch the omnibus to work… and vanished. I had men on the lookout for him all of yesterday, frequenting his known haunts, to no avail. It is most curious.”
“Most curious,” Holmes agreed. “And under the circumstances, not a little troubling.”
“Ah-ha,” said Lestrade. “Already you sound as if you know something I don’t. Gregson was consulting with you on a case just before Christmas, was he not? One which culminated in the suicide of a certain Gong-Fen Shou. Do you think his disappearance might have some connection to that? Has he been kidnapped by Orientals, associates of Gong-Fen’s, in revenge? Might it be the handiwork of one of their gangs, their – what do you call ’em? Tongs.”
Lestrade looked optimistic. He was clearly hoping for a simple answer to the mystery, one which made logical sense, one he could act upon. And why not?
“If so,” he went on, “I can have a score of men, a hundred, combing Limehouse. Just like that.” He clicked his fingers. “They’ll find him in no time.”
“Inspector,” said Holmes, “I cannot tell you that Gregson’s disappearance has no relation at all to what happened with Gong-Fen. Nor can I tell you that it does.”
“Oh.” Lestrade was crestfallen. “Well, what can you tell me?”
“Not much, for now. Is it entirely uncharacteristic of Gregson to behave in this way? You know him better than I. There has been no prior absenteeism of this sort?”
“None. Gregson, if nothing else, has an exemplary attendance record. Whatever I think of him as a detective, I have to give him that.”
“All the more concerning. I shall need to look over his flat, of course. Scour it for potential clues. One can only hope your constable did not interfere too much with the state of it and mar whatever useful evidence there might be. Policemen can be such clodhopping oafs.”
“Now, now, Mr Holmes…”
“You know it to be true as well as I do, Lestrade. So his home will be my first port of call. Battersea, you say. I will need the address.”
* * *
Lestrade departed 221B with more of a spring in his step than when he had arrived. He was obviously heartened by the knowledge that Sherlock Holmes was on the case.
Holmes himself seemed invigorated, but worried too.
“I would like to dismiss this as coincidence,” said he as he gathered up his overcoat and muffler. I, too, was attiring myself against the dismal weather. “It may simply be that Gregson has had to respond to some dire family emergency and, in his haste, neglected to notify his superiors.”
“But you do not think so.”
“No, Watson, I do not. He is too conscientious, too punctilious for that. I think the timing, so close to the new moon, is all too significant. I think – I fear – that Moriarty has selected his next sacrifice. The question is, why Gregson, of all people? The usual victim each month has been a nobody. As a police official, Gregson is quite abundantly a somebody.”
“As was Gong-Fen,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but that was different. That was a reprisal, and occurred out of sequence, between new moons. I maintain that the choice of Gregson is inconsistent with Moriarty’s pattern hitherto. It is a suggestive development, an escalation, and—”
He was interrupted by the doorbell ringing again. This time it was a messenger with a telegram, which read:
MR HOLMES
COME TO THE DIOGENES CLUB POST HASTE.
– WHITWORTH
“The Diogenes Club?” I said. “I have never heard of such an
institution.”
“Few have,” replied Holmes. “My brother belongs to it – is one of its founders indeed. It is, simply put, the queerest club in Christendom. Its roster is a veritable Who’s Who of oddballs and eccentrics, the kind of men no other club would take, the kind who have a particular genius for getting along with nobody.”
“Oh.” I nearly asked if Holmes himself was a member. “And who is Whitworth?”
“The secretary.”
“What does he want from you?”
“That remains to be seen. But it is highly out of the ordinary for him to have cabled me, as we have nothing in common but Mycroft. One can only infer, then, that it is on the subject of Mycroft that he wishes to see me.”
“What do you think the matter is?”
“I cannot say, but the terse and peremptory wording of the telegram does not lend itself to a positive interpretation. It seems more summons than request, and I must do as bidden.”
“But Gregson… Battersea…”
“Can wait,” Holmes said, lodging his opera hat on his head and making for the door. “Mycroft first.”
IN MY PUBLISHED OEUVRE I INITIALLY MADE reference to the Diogenes Club and the most distinguished of its members, Mycroft Holmes, in the story “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter”, which recounted events in the year 1887, seven years after the narrative set out in these pages. I stated in that tale that I had not known until then of Mycroft’s existence, and had even come to believe that Sherlock Holmes had no living relatives.
That was, of course, a fabrication, as this book makes clear. I think I chose 1887 as the year in which to depict Holmes’s revelation to me that he had an older brother because it was in the spring of that same year that my own older brother finally succumbed to the vicissitudes of his heavy drinking and perished. There seemed a pleasing symmetry, a kind of aesthetic balance, in having one sibling step into the limelight when another had just taken his final bow.
In 1880, the Diogenes Club was still in its infancy, but already it was proving a haven for the least clubbable men in England, those who sought the company of others but not the conversation, who preferred to socialise in silence and pay their fellow members so little heed they might as well have been invisible. Back then, too, there was not yet the club within a club, the secret subsidiary organisation which went by the appellation the Dagon Club.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The Dagon Club and its objectives will have to wait until the second and third volume of these memoirs.
We drove to Pall Mall, arriving at the door to the Diogenes – which stood some little distance from the Carlton – shortly after ten o’clock. In the hall we showed our cards to a footman who wordlessly led us past the glass panels through which was visible the club’s large, luxurious reading room, and onward to that small chamber, the only place on the premises wherein one was permitted to speak, the Stranger’s Room. There awaited a pot-bellied individual of stuffy appearance whom I took to be Whitworth.
No sooner had the door closed behind us than Sherlock Holmes said, “Come on then, Whitworth. Out with it. What is the meaning of this? Where is my brother?”
Whitworth ducked his head ruefully. “That’s just it, Mr Holmes,” said he. “I have no idea. That’s why I asked you to come. As club secretary, I am in attendance at the Diogenes more regularly than most, but the frequency with which I visit is nothing compared with your brother. He is here, as you know, every day like clockwork, from a quarter to five in the evening until twenty to eight. You can set your watch by him. Rain or shine, he never fails to show his face. Yet for two days in a row, yesterday and the day before, he has not come.”
Holmes’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened to a grim slit. “That is indisputable? There is no mistake?”
“You may check the register if you like. Even assuming he omitted to sign in, I was here on both those evenings and did not see him. More to the point, none of the other members saw him, and several of them drew me aside to this very room to tell me so. That’s how unusual they found it. We may not pay much attention to one another at the Diogenes, but by the same token we notice one another’s absences. That is especially the case when someone as prestigious as Mycroft Holmes is concerned, someone so central to the club’s existence, so much a part of the furniture.”
“At his size, he is hard to miss.”
“And concomitantly, he is more easily missable if he is not present when he should be. Since he dines in every night, the serving staff too have remarked on his non-appearance. All of which leaves me baffled, to be frank, and somewhat slightly perturbed. The other Mr Holmes is not unwell, is he? I was hoping you would know.”
“We are hardly close, Mycroft and I,” Holmes said. “I am not kept abreast of his daily activities. He may be unwell, he may not.”
“In that case, I regret disturbing you, sir,” said Whitworth, countering Holmes’s curtness with obsequiousness. “I merely felt I ought to make enquiries, in case there had been some… unfortunate eventuality. I mean, the other Mr Holmes is still young, but a man of his stature…”
“Corpulence, you mean.”
“And of his appetite…”
“Gluttony.”
“Yes, well. One never knows, that’s all. Anything can happen.”
* * *
“And I am very much afraid something has,” said Holmes as we exited the Diogenes. “Just not what Whitworth was hinting at. Not yet, at any rate.”
“You believe Moriarty has abducted your brother too? In addition to Gregson?”
“Two unaccountable disappearances. Two men missing for over forty-eight hours. I cannot help but see Moriarty’s hand behind it.”
“But why two, when hitherto he has taken only one victim at a time?”
“The quantity of abductees matters far less than the identity. Neither of them was chosen randomly. Both of them are known to me. One is my own close kin.”
“He abducted them to attract your attention.”
“It is the only logical inference.”
“Well, Holmes,” I said, “you have only yourself to blame. You goaded Moriarty with that telegram of yours. You poked the hornets’ nest. This is the upshot.”
Holmes glared at me, but I discerned a flicker of guilt in his eyes. Here, once more, was the impetuous young man who had driven off to Dorking with Gong-Fen, heedless of the consequences. Now, however, he was beginning to realise that reckless actions might put others in jeopardy, not just him alone.
“That may be so,” said he, “but the professor will find that I am capable of delivering quite a sting myself.”
With that, Holmes stepped across Pall Mall, smartly dodging traffic, seeming to care little whether I accompanied him or not. We fetched up on the opposite kerb, before a grand townhouse. Holmes climbed the steps and rapped the knocker.
“Who lives here?” I enquired.
“Mycroft. He has a suite of rooms on the second floor.”
I glanced back across the street to the Diogenes. Very conveniently situated, I thought. In the cab on the way over, Holmes had told me that his brother worked in Whitehall, which lay just round the corner. All in all it would seem that Mycroft Holmes preferred to confine himself to this one small district of London, leading a life both well ordered and heavily circumscribed.
A page let us in, and Holmes soon ascertained from him that Mycroft was not in residence. The page affirmed that he had not seen “’ide nor ’air of Mr ’olmes” since Wednesday and admitted that he found this a mite unusual.
“On Wednesday, did he have any guests, perchance?”
“Not as I rightly recall, sir.”
“No one came to call on him at all?” Holmes pressed.
“Well now…” The young man shook his head. “I ’ave a feeling that a stranger might ’ave come by and I answered the door to him. Was it Wednesday? Maybe. Can’t for the life of me say for sure. I could be getting it muddled up with Tuesday, or… or…”
“
An articulate, rather charming man, albeit not good-looking?”
Holmes gave a physical description of Moriarty, but the page looked nonplussed.
“You know, I sort of remember meeting someone like that. But, oddest thing, it’s like it ’appened ’ere, but also not. Almost like I might’ve dreamt it. D’you ever get that feeling? When you’re sure you did something, only maybe you didn’t, maybe you only imagined it? That’s ’ow this feels.”
Holmes glanced at me, his look acknowledging my own conclusion: that the page had been subjected to Moriarty’s “silveriest of silver tongues”. The boy’s mind had been clouded, his memory left a smeary blur, like a chalk painting after rain.
Brandishing his calling card, Holmes established to the page’s satisfaction that he was Mycroft’s brother and said he would like to take a look round his rooms. The page regretted that he did not have the key, but Holmes replied that Mycroft had given him a duplicate.
We showed ourselves up to the second floor. Holmes’s claim about a duplicate key was not wholly the truth. He did not have one. What he did have was a set of lockpicks, the same lockpicks he must have used to gain access to Stamford’s apartment on York Road. He instructed me to stand by the stairwell and keep watch, in case the page should grow curious and come to check on us, or another resident or a tradesman should happen by.
I saw little of what Holmes did with the implements, but the lock seemed to present only a minor challenge. A few seconds of deft manipulation, a quarter of a minute at most, and then, with a click, the mechanism yielded to his ministrations and the door was open.
Mycroft’s habit was to be fanatically neat. That much was apparent to me the moment we stepped inside his rooms. The place was immaculate. There was not an item of furniture askew, no speck of dust visible. The curtains hung so straight and their folds were so uniform, it was as though they were marble sculptures executed with ruler and set square. Even the coals heaped in the scuttle looked orderly.
The Cthulhu Casebooks Page 21
