The Empty Birdcage

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Seeing as how I shall never marry, there is no danger of that! he thought.

  In any event, one problem at a time. He had refused to become Sherlock’s sounding board until his brother had dried himself off and changed his clothing. In the peaceful interlude that followed, and grateful for the distraction, Mycroft had examined the frog under a magnifying glass. He had been careful to utilize tweezers, as he was in agreement with Huan that a creature so colorful should not be touched until one could ascertain what it was.

  From his schoolboy studies of biology, Mycroft recalled that coloration to prevent attack was called aposematism, and that its function was primarily visual, indicating to predators that the colored prey was noxious.

  “‘Conspicuousness evolves in tandem with noxiousness,’” he recited aloud, as if addressing the dead amphibian under his lens. He recalled that the colors that most effectively repelled predators were black, white, red, and yellow, which meant that gold certainly fitted the bill. Other odd behaviors, sounds, and even odors were often a part of these creatures’ modes of deterrence. Sherlock had mentioned that Mrs. Jurgins had heard a whistling sound at the moment that the cat had run off. Sherlock had assumed that it had come from a bird. Most likely, it had been emitted from the frog itself, as a warning to the cat to stay away.

  “Clearly ineffectual,” he muttered to the frog.

  Other than coloration and size—it was an inch in diameter—

  Mycroft could deduce nothing of worth. Oh, it had tiny adhesive discs upon its toes, most likely to aid it in climbing. And its left hind leg was scarred on the bottom: two identical scars, as a matter of fact, a millimeter apart. But the possible causes were too diverse for a solid guess.

  At any rate, he did not recall reading about this particular frog, certainly not in his library, whose panoply of books he knew by heart. The same could be said of the strange thorn, undoubtedly from a cactus, that Sherlock had pulled from Elise Wickham’s neck.

  He agreed with his brother that the two items were somehow related, in that both were foreign in the extreme, in that both had manifested far out of their natural habitat… and in proximity to the killer’s appearance.

  Sherlock waltzed back in, at long last dry and wrapped in a clean robe. He was also as wide awake as if it had been nine in the morning.

  He took a seat across from Mycroft and extracted his shag and papers from the robe’s pocket.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing untoward,” Mycroft replied. “Did you notice the scars on its left hind leg?”

  “Naturally. Ideas?”

  “None.”

  “Well then, here’s something you might be able to help with,” Sherlock said—managing to sound, as he often did, insulting while requesting a favor. “Have you ever heard of an enterprise called Jobine, Mathison?”

  “Why would you ask me that, out of the blue?” Mycroft replied, surprised.

  “Because Mrs. Jurgins’s dead son was namesake to his brother-in-law, who is employed there.”

  “As it so happens, Jobine, Mathison specialize in precious metals, nothing remotely nefarious about them.”

  “Then why do you look as if you are withholding something? No use denying it, you are entirely too fragile this evening to pretend otherwise.”

  Mycroft sighed. “I may be keeping an eye on Deutsche Bank for… a variety of reasons.”

  “Surely not because they are German!” Sherlock teased.

  “Stop it. In March of this year, Jobine, Mathison partnered with Deutsche Bank to purchase the Via Esmeralda Mining Company.”

  “Now there’s a familiar name.”

  Sherlock struck a match to his ghastly cigarette and then blew out an obscene amount of smoke. “I believe that Percy Butcher’s relatives might have an investment therein, as does Lady Anne…”

  “What do you know about Lady Anne’s investments?”

  “We may’ve exchanged a few words in passing,” Sherlock admitted with a shrug.

  “Sherlock! You were strictly prohibited—!”

  “And yet, here we are! And my doing so may have placed us that much closer to the answer. I suppose you have information about their other investors at your War Office?”

  “It is not ‘my’ War Office, and no. That would be the Board of Trade—”

  “What about the Oaks Colliery?”

  “Truly, you have traveled all over the map!” Mycroft declared. “First, Jobine, Mathison, then Via Esmeralda, now the Oaks Colliery?”

  Sherlock eyed him plaintively. “What has taken place tonight, brother? For it is more than exhaustion, or vacillating health.”

  “My health is not remotely vacillating!” Mycroft shot back. “And, unless you wish to revisit your breaking the single, solitary rule that I imposed upon you, other than being forced to go about in a very fancy carriage, I suggest that you leave it alone. Again: why did you bring up Oaks?”

  “Because Mrs. Jurgins’s husband, a supervisor at the colliery, was killed there. At first my ears pricked up, for our murderer is of course obsessed with fire. But then she listed the dead as numbering 384…”

  Mycroft stared at him.

  “What did I say?” Sherlock asked, staring back at him.

  “There were indeed 384 victims,” Mycroft said slowly. “Upon the first day. Then, the following day, rescuers arrived. The colliery blew again, a residual explosion that killed twenty-seven men who were attempting to free the dead bodies from the rubble.”

  “411 men dead?” Sherlock gasped.

  Mycroft could feel himself slump further into the chair. He was so very tired.

  “Well. There is nothing that can be done about it tonight. Tomorrow first thing,” he said, “I shall pay a visit to Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, president of the Board of Trade, to beg for a list of investors in Via Esmeralda and the Oaks Colliery, and see if there is a link.”

  “What about me?” Sherlock asked, as if in fear that Mycroft would snatch it out of his hand at the last moment.

  “Our bargain holds. I expect you to knock about the British Museum’s natural history collection to investigate the crow and frog and what have you. For if we are able to stop this man in his tracks, we shall have to understand his methods. Now. When you are done with that cigarette, kindly extinguish it, and do not so much as cast an eye upon my books again.”

  Just as he was shutting the door behind him, praying that the smell of that cheap shag would not permeate the carpets, Mycroft heard Sherlock call out his name in a strangled voice. He opened the door again, and there was his brother, on his feet and facing him.

  “I… I cannot feel my hands,” he murmured as the cigarette dropped from between his fingers.

  42

  KNOWING THAT SHERLOCK WOULD NOT WONDER AT THE extravagance but would take it as his due, Mycroft hired not one but two physicians. After the medical sages had observed him for several hours, and after the numbness had neither abated nor spread but remained confined to his hands, they confirmed only what he and Sherlock already suspected. The little frog, still unknown and unnamed, had most likely released some sort of poisonous brew that in turn had made its predator—the cat—toxic to anyone who touched her.

  Huan, who had handled the feline by the tail, had suffered no ill effects; whereas Sherlock, who had cut into the cat’s belly and opened up the flesh with his fingers before noticing the frog therein, had been compromised. Neither physician had ever seen anything like it, and both seemed incurious to pursue it. The only call of duty they heard, in Mycroft’s estimation, was home and bed, with the rather terse suggestion that he send word again in the morning, should Sherlock’s condition take a turn for the worse.

  When morning finally came, Sherlock’s fingers were demoted from fully numb to merely tingling, but he was still quite incapable of even dressing himself properly, much less of carefully leafing through the pages of a brittle old book.

  “Perhaps Huan can help me,” he suggested, for he dearly wishe
d to go to the British Museum and did not relish being left behind.

  “He cannot read, Sherlock. It would take forever.”

  “Perhaps Douglas?”

  “No.”

  “Where is Douglas?”

  “Busy.”

  Mycroft was just as glad to go alone. For, while sleep would not come, his mind had strayed back to Heinrich Schliemann. Though he very much despised Schliemann’s methods of archaeology, his instincts told him that the excavator was on the cusp of a weighty find. Since there was no way of halting his momentum, why should Zaharoff, or Count Wolfgang, for that matter, gain from this potential discovery of the century? Especially since Zaharoff was likely to funnel a portion to the Ottoman Empire, and Count Wolfgang to Prussia! Britain should have no lack. In a battle of the wallets, Mycroft was determined to emerge victorious. For his country’s sake, he would match Zaharoff and Wolfgang arm for arm!

  The first stop of the day, therefore, was to his bank, C. Hoare & Co., nicknamed The Golden Bottle. Mycroft instructed his banker, Mr. Dalrymple, to invest as much as he dared in the venture.

  The next stop was to the Board of Trade. The president, Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, had left London for the day, but he had done Mycroft the courtesy of assigning his secretary to the task. As it so happened, the secretary was possessive of his files, and Mycroft was forced to cool his heels for over an hour while the bespectacled, balding little man juggled ledgers, one for the Oaks Colliery, the other for Via Esmeralda Mining Company.

  Mycroft watched him turn to this page and that with what he could only describe as methodical lethargy. It was infuriating.

  “There are hundreds of small investors in Via Esmeralda, Mr. Holmes,” the secretary opined at last, squinting up from his labors.

  “I can well imagine,” Mycroft replied, praying for patience. “For it is, after all, an emerald mine, in one of the countries that is richest in emeralds. But, as I said an hour ago, if some of those investors are found to have also invested in the colliery that exploded in 1866, that is the link that I seek.”

  “Of course. There are fewer investors in the colliery. Twenty-one in all.”

  “Yes!” Mycroft said with forced bonhomie. “And of those twenty-one, how many have also invested in Via Esmeralda?”

  “I am sure I do not know, Mr. Holmes…”

  “Might you check?” Mycroft asked.

  “I suppose…” he said with a frown, as if Mycroft had asked for the moon.

  The little man looked from one ledger to the other, from one to the other again, and then again—until Mycroft was dizzy from watching. At last, the little man said, “I believe it is twelve. Twelve people have invested in both!”

  “Wonderful!” Mycroft cried. “And may I have those twelve names?”

  “They are written in these two ledgers, do you see?” He indicated the books in his hand, both opened to pages that Mycroft could not see at all. “Now,” he said. “I must double-check to make sure they are correct. That these twelve individuals each had dealings with the colliery—and then invested in Via Esmeralda. That is what you need, is it not?”

  “Yes,” Mycroft said. “Yes, that is exactly what I need. Perhaps I can assist you with—”

  But the little man lifted his chin for silence.

  “Here, then, is number one. Ah, and there is number two… No, wait, incorrect spelling. Off by one letter. There is number two!”

  He scanned the columns with his index finger, wetting the tip of it with his tongue as he did so. “That one, I believe, is number three. Yes, for it is a match, d’you see? Christian name, middle initial, surname, done! Now then, we seek number four…”

  “So might you call out the names as you go?” Mycroft interrupted, leaning over the desk between them, his voice perhaps more boisterous than warranted.

  “Well I believe I might be able to give you them all, if you will but have a moment’s patience!” the little man scolded.

  He removed his spectacles, blew upon the glass, cleaned them with his sleeve, and then put them back on.

  “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. I was seeking number four, was I not? Four, four, four…”

  Mycroft found himself sliding across the desk and snatching the books out of the little man’s hands. He knew that there would be hell to pay at some point, but no matter.

  He was going after a killer. The rest would have to wait.

  * * *

  Huan skidded the carriage to a stop in front of the museum steps. Mycroft took them two by two. Inside, after a few false starts, he found an illustrated journal so old that the edges crumbled in his hands, but it had the information he sought.

  Though nearly all crows were adept with tools, it informed him, the most adept were two island dwellers. The New Caledonian crow was black and sleek and looked very much like Britain’s domestic. But the other, the ‘Alalā, was found solely in the western and southeastern parts of the Hawaiian islands. Its wings were more rounded, its bill thicker. It had brownish-black plumage, with bristly feathers at the throat, which could account for the old man’s description of its looking ‘buffeted about.’

  “‘Omnivorous, extremely resourceful, and intelligent, it emits a guttural caw,’” he read, which also fit what Sherlock had said.

  That done, he moved on to frogs. So many frogs, more than six thousand species. Mycroft rushed through the amphibia animalia of Western Europe, Russia, and North America; but what he was really after, and was hard-pressed to come upon, was information on the frogs of South America, and Colombia in particular.

  Just as he was bemoaning the paucity of resources, in a stack of unmarked journals he came upon one that featured amphibian species in the northwestern jungles of Colombia.

  He roused a museum assistant, napping on a nearby chair.

  “Might this be purchased?” he asked.

  The man gave him a bedeviled look, and wiped a hint of spittle from the corner of his mouth. “Sir, we do not sell—”

  “Half a crown.”

  Within moments, he was back in his carriage, the journal opened upon his knee, hastening to pick up Sherlock.

  43

  OF THE TWELVE NAMES UPON THE LIST, ONLY ONE HAD not yet lost a member of her family. She was a former investor in the Oaks Colliery by the name of Dorothea Greer. Thankfully, she resided not far from St. John’s Wood, and turned out to be neither old nor infirm, neither hard of hearing nor stubborn. Instead, impressed by Mycroft’s credentials—rather, by his former credentials—she stood upon the threshold of her tidy, semi-detached house and with frightened eyes enumerated all of the people whom she loved and would be deeply wounded to lose, until finally she came upon one who fit the killer’s parameters.

  Isolated, yet accessible. Ideally, living alone, and a creature of habit.

  “Should we alert the authorities?” she asked, her forehead creased with worry.

  “Best not,” Mycroft said. “For we cannot risk scaring him away.”

  “Might I come with you, then?” she implored. “For my cousin Gwyneth is dear to me. We spent summers at the seaside together—”

  “No,” Sherlock interjected. “All should stay as it is. Mrs. Greer, do you know of anyone who might wish to hurt you?”

  “Not a soul!” she assured them.

  “And were you yourself an investor in Oaks Colliery?” Mycroft asked.

  “Mycroft, we must go,” Sherlock urged, for his brother seemed to be wanting too many extraneous details.

  “One moment,” he replied. “Mrs. Greer, I assure you that you are not speaking out of school…”

  “Yes, I understand. No, I was not. The original investor of Oaks was my late father. But my husband and I used the profits from Oaks to buy into Esmeralda.”

  “Profits from an explosion?” Mycroft asked, surprised.

  “Well yes, not from the first, of course, but from the second. When those poor rescuers died, the company was shamed into paying back double to all the investors, so that we would
not make a fuss, I suppose. They established the Oaks Colliery Relief Fund, and people sent in cash donations. The Queen herself contributed.”

  “What of the dead rescuers? Did you get to know any of their immediate family?” Mycroft asked—and Sherlock suddenly comprehended his line of query.

  “Yes, of course. We commiserated with them. They too were recompensed. One man, as I recall, lost his only son.”

  “Do you remember his name?” Sherlock asked.

  “No. For in ’66 I was still too young to pay much attention. But one detail did impress me greatly: on holidays from work, he traveled. He had gone all over the world!”

  * * *

  Sherlock’s small golden frog turned out to be Phyllobates terribilis, also known as the golden poison frog, the golden arrow frog, and the golden dart frog, which pleased Sherlock no end. It was found in only one place in the world, a small area of Colombia. The source of its poison was its skin, which was coated with an alkaloid toxin known as batrachotoxin, a self-defense mechanism emitted at the first hint of danger. It carried, on its very small body, a large enough dose to kill ten men.

  “Huan saved your life,” Mycroft said, as he and Sherlock sat in the jostling carriage, on their way to Dorothea Greer’s cousin’s home in Prittlewell, Essex.

  “Symptoms?” Sherlock asked. For he could not yet hold the journal in his hands and was therefore dependent on Mycroft’s recall.

  “Nothing overt, which is what makes it so difficult to diagnose. No foaming at the mouth, no tremors. It attacks the sodium channels of nerve cells. Kills instantly. Stops the heart.”

  Sherlock sat back in his seat and drew a breath. “And how much toxin is required to take down a human being?” he asked.