“And the other artist? He is not important, I take it?” Douglas asked, clearly not giving up.
“No, he is not. He would know no more than Chen did, and quite possibly less.”
“Mycroft,” Douglas said, still somewhat testily, “you may wish to revisit your notions of accountability.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“If someone is hurt, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a middleman or at the bottom of the rung, he is still culpable. Hierarchy, like ignorance, is no excuse.”
“I am not interested in those who take orders,” Mycroft protested, “but in those who give them! Beyond that, what I told Chen is true: we are not gendarmes, Douglas! We do not go about putting people in fetters! Do you not believe that my brain is my most powerful weapon?”
“Obviously,” Douglas grumbled.
“Then is it not best used to its full capacity, rather than wasted on small fry like Chen or even someone as loathsome as Beeton? The pertinent questions are these: who is managing this affair? To what purpose? And how do we stop him not once—so he can scurry off and do it again elsewhere—but once and for all?”
“You know, Mycroft,” Douglas said, his tone so soft that Mycroft struggled to hear him over the merciless rain, “even the so-called ‘little people’ have to be given the dignity of accountability. They are still living beings that can learn, and grow, and come to the light…”
“Ah, now you are speaking of the nature of God and of our ultimate purpose on earth! I vow that we can have all the philosophical arguments you desire, but at present, we have more mundane concerns, would you not agree?”
They had arrived at the carriage. Mycroft opened the door and both men all but hurled themselves inside. At the same instant, a flash of lightning illuminated the murky water of the docks, with rumblings of thunder close behind.
The two sloughed off their wet overcoats, laid them on the floor at their feet, and sat back. As the carriage lurched into motion, Douglas patted his friend on the shoulder.
“A few deep breaths,” Douglas said, eyeing him with concern, “for you sound like a scythe whistling through the air.”
“Rue,” Mycroft began after a pause. “Tansy, dahlia, rose, lily, myrtle, anise, amaryllis, aster, sage, holly, violet, tulip, poppy, and daffodil. Do those suggest anything to you?”
Douglas shrugged. “You mean, other than they are all women’s names?”
“Dear God,” Mycroft muttered. “That is what I have been pondering since I heard the first five! And I admit to Rose, Aster, Lily, Violet, Dahlia, Myrtle, Holly, Amaryllis, and heaven help us, Tulip. I even grant you Poppy. But Tansy? Daffodil? Sage? Rue? Or what proper little girl would wish to be named Anise? What else but a child would be saddled with a name like that?”
“Dolls, perhaps?” Douglas ventured. “Those child-sized bisque and cloth dolls… or are we becoming too fantastical?”
“No, Douglas, not a bit,” Mycroft replied. “Intelligent imagination is vital to this sort of deduction! Dolls. However improbable a hypothesis, it cannot be discarded. For dolls like that can be containers for many things. And curse this old bachelor for not thinking of it first.”
“You are far from an ‘old bachelor,’ and to be fair, you have seen only one, whereas I spotted a half-dozen sinking in the foam at the wreck of the Royal Adelaide…”
“Sinking in the foam, you say?”
“Yes, it was only the choppy waves and rather shallow water that allowed me to see them at all.”
“But bisque and cloth would have floated longer, no?”
“Never occurred to me at the time, but most likely.”
“So, let us suppose the ships transport dolls,” Mycroft said. “And inside those dolls is contraband of some kind.”
“Could they be using dolls to transport sovereigns?” Douglas asked. “Could it be that Deshi Hai Lin’s driver brought us the contraband?”
Mycroft shook his head. “To begin with, I would have to ask, ‘Why us?’ Secondly, it seems an impractical way to move either dolls or coins. But, for the sake of argument: we know a sovereign weighs point-two-eight-one-seven…”
“Might we say point-two-eight ounces?” Douglas suggested.
“Fine. Let us suppose, then,” Mycroft went on, “that the cloth body of each doll is now a repository for a thousand sovereigns apiece. It would weigh a tad over one-point-two stone, still easy to move about. A doll of that height, weighing in at just over one stone, would not raise suspicions. But if the names of the flowers and herbs indicate dolls in a shipment, and there are fifteen, that still adds up to a mere fifteen thousand sovereigns per docking.”
“Yes,” Douglas said. “It is too elaborate a ruse for such a paltry payoff. And more weight would surely come to the attention of customs agents.”
“And drugs…? Yes, but again, why? Why the cloak and dagger? There has to be more to it,” Mycroft said, shaking his head as if hoping to dislodge something from it. “We seem to always be short an essential piece.”
They heard the soft knocking on the carriage roof, along with Huan’s “Whoa!” that said they were back at Nickolus House.
Douglas retrieved his wet coat, opened the carriage door, and got out.
“Douglas?” Mycroft queried, leaning out through the open door after him. “Do we bring Sherlock in? Or leave him in relative ignorance until after his exams? I must confess we could use an extra brain—no offense…”
“None taken,” Douglas said, smiling.
“But that would force us to reveal Deshi Hai Lin’s link to Cainborn, for it is now impossible to believe that Lin is not somehow involved.”
“What would be the worst-case scenario if we were to tell him?”
Mycroft, feeling suddenly miserable, shrugged. “Sherlock has never expressed admiration for anyone besides Cainborn, and he is more sensitive than he seems. Linking the man, however innocently, to a potentially shady character like Lin would bother Sherlock a great deal, possibly sidetracking his exams. Getting him to study in the first place has been a Sisyphean chore. He cannot fail, Douglas, for I sincerely do not think I could ever persuade him to repeat the term. And if he does not, if he should abort his education, what in the world will become of him?”
“He has you,” Douglas said. “And he still has time to grow up.”
He may not have me for long, Mycroft thought—though what he said was, “He is very nearly nineteen!”
“People do change, you know! And you needn’t make the decision this moment,” Douglas exclaimed as he hurried towards the front door of Nickolus House. “Sleep on it. Tomorrow will bring new clarity, you will see!”
“Besides,” Mycroft called back with a final wave, “what harm could one more night of Latin possibly do?”
41
SHERLOCK KEPT OPENING HIS EYES AND THEN CLOSING them again, for keeping them open seemed an inconceivable chore, as did lifting his head or his limbs. His brain felt like a ball of wool. His head ached, his fingertips were numbed. As for his feet, he could not feel them at all.
During a brief moment when his eyes were open, he noticed that the ceiling above his head was much lower than he recalled. It began to dawn on him that he was no longer on the ground floor of The Water Monkey, that he had most likely been carried, insentient, to the floor above.
As he became more cognizant of his situation, it also occurred to him that no one knew where he was: not his brother or Douglas, not Huan, not Ducasse or McPeel; not even the twins, whose nearly pathological lack of curiosity could usually be counted upon as an asset.
There was no one to come to his aid.
Given that sobering realization, he did not attempt to move his body one inch more, but mimicked the slow rolling motion of the eyes that connoted—he hoped—a dreamlike state. As he scanned his surroundings he saw that along the wall were unpadded wooden berths, while towards the center of the room where he lay, other cots had been set up with straw mattresses, their beige blankets stained
the color of tobacco by too much human sweat.
Most of the cots were unoccupied, but here and there a few shadowy figures had taken up residence, curled atop them like so many overgrown fetuses.
It appeared that the windows had been boarded over, making it all but impossible to guess night from day. The only sources of light were little circles that appeared and disappeared like flaming red cicadas, or perhaps like devil eyes winking here and there. It made Sherlock wonder, in a rather detached manner: should a blaze consume the building, with but one narrow doorway leading downstairs, would anyone get out alive?
As his senses became more attuned to his surroundings, he began to hear breathing that sounded like myriad sighs, along with the hum of voices lifting and falling, though he could not make out the words. But all these rustles, whispers and murmurs were having a soporific effect, and Sherlock very nearly dozed off again until one word caused him to start.
“’E’s a right proper baker,” a man’s voice was saying to an unseen companion in a bass so low that Sherlock could feel it vibrate inside his chest. “Best I ever come across…”
In his muddled state, and before he could stop himself, Sherlock was sitting up, peering into the darkness for the source.
As he did so, he felt a movement beside him and turned just in time to see his nemesis holding a hypodermic syringe high in the air and sporting a grin.
“Night-night, Basil,” Moon Face said before grabbing Sherlock’s arm and plunging the needle into his vein.
* * *
Early on Tuesday morning, as an occasional hint of sun broke through the clouds, Mycroft had Huan drive him to The Golden Bottle. In business long before London’s roadways had numbers, Mycroft’s bank was known less by its name, C. Hoare & Co., and more by a gilded leather bottle that hung outside the edifice. The Golden Bottle had helped Mycroft grow the bulk of his now ten-million-pound fortune, and he was nothing if not faithful. As he sat across from the bank’s manager, Carl Dalrymple, Mycroft silently informed his quickening heart and sweaty palms that now was not the time to misbehave. He stretched his tingling fingers and drew a few deep breaths that caused Dalrymple to look up from his labors, his great caterpillar eyebrows lifting in concern.
Dalrymple’s hair was combed forward upon his head so that it formed a frizzy Roman helmet that sat just above a set of even frizzier mutton chops, while a slug of a mustache curled over lips so thin they seemed composed of one line apiece.
In spite of this heinous appearance, Dalrymple was a keen manager of money, and he had a fine eye for detail, melded with what could only be described as a spaniel-like desire to please.
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Holmes?” he asked, a question that Mycroft had been hearing more and more, to his chagrin.
“Forgive me,” Mycroft replied. “I tossed and turned a good deal last night.”
“As did I,” Dalrymple seconded. “Have been for months. England’s economic forecast seems to me rather grim, and no one is lifting a finger!”
Mycroft, thankful not to be—for once—the only prophet of doom, nodded his full agreement. “Until the Queen and the PM are convinced, you and I, and a few others like us, can but watch the avalanche as it approaches,” Mycroft grumbled.
“And invest in gold!” Dalrymple added.
On his desk were the dozen Australian sovereigns from Regent Tobaccos, side by side with another dozen from the C. Hoare & Co. vault. At his elbow was a dropper of nitric acid and a small tool that resembled a crochet hook, and before him was a troy weight scale and a glass of water.
Dalrymple made a series of miniscule scratches on the surface of each coin with the hook, then placed a drop of nitric acid on the abrasion. That done, he deposited each into the glass of water and watched as it sank to the bottom. He weighted them one by one upon the troy weight scale; and finally, with a magnifying glass, he diligently appraised them all again.
“Is it as I suspected?” Mycroft asked by rote, indicating the sovereigns he had brought. “Are they worth their weight in gold?”
“They certainly seem to be, Mr. Holmes,” Dalrymple replied, frowning. “And I am aggrieved to say I cannot explain the discrepancy of their colorations, in spite of the year and the location where they were minted.”
“The purported year,” Mycroft amended. “Yes, neither can I.”
“Purported year?” Dalrymple repeated. “Mr. Holmes, while I admit they must be melted down to ascertain their exact percentages of silver and copper, I can assure you that the gold is very much real and of the correct gauge, point-two-eight-one-seven—”
“I realize this is far-fetched, Mr. Dalrymple,” Mycroft said by way of response, “but if corrupt individuals had somehow got a hold of the precise balance of gold to copper and silver, could not metallurgists press counterfeit coins to look identical?”
Dalrymple coughed, for he was too gracious to do otherwise. “It is feasible,” he said, “but it makes no sense, you see. I have heard of and even seen outlandish forgeries. But their gold content is negligible—that is the point. It is trading the lesser for the better. What would be the purpose of trading same for same?”
“Kindly follow me on this,” Mycroft said. “Given that they are quite perfect, too perfect, in fact, would they raise suspicions?”
“I wish with all my heart that I could say yes, but the answer is most likely no, not remotely. Bank clerks and merchants would not know the difference, and numismatists would not be on the lookout for such an unusual problem!”
“Now let us suppose,” Mycroft pressed on, “that someone was conducting illegal ventures for which they were being paid in gold. A lot of gold, much more than they could adequately hide…”
This notion seemed to have caught Dalrymple so unawares that he shot out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box and set about pacing the room. “What you are intimating is that, rather than hide quantities of gold until such a time as it can be eked out without arousing suspicion, someone is minting ‘coins of the realm’ that can be used immediately? As native currency? And distributed freely throughout the Empire?”
“That sums it up,” Mycroft said. “Given Britain’s hefty stamp upon the world—its countries, protectorates, dominions, and so forth—there would be no possibility of tracking down these forgeries, even if someone were aware of them. Even were they to amount to millions of pounds. The Empire’s vast holdings ensure that those millions would be but a drop in the ocean. Merchants in India, for example, are not losing sleep, wondering if they have seen one too many Australian sovereigns with a banksia instead of a ribbon!”
“But… such a thing is monstrous!” Dalrymple cried indignantly.
“Yes,” Mycroft said. “I thought so too.”
Mr. Dalrymple ceased pacing. “But then, if one goes to all the trouble to mint this particular Australian coin of this particular year, why not build in the variation? Why risk any exposure, however improbable?”
“Yes, I wondered that. And I realize that the difference in the Sydney hues was an anomaly, an error. So, one guess is that, even had the forgers known about it, they may not have wished to attempt it and thereby make a mess of it. Best to follow a known formula. As for why this particular coin: the banksia in Queen Victoria’s hair is so unique that it allows forgers to put their coins into circulation and never retrieve them by mistake,” Mycroft explained. “And, because it is an embarrassment to the Crown, the moment one does rise to the surface, the Crown itself removes it.”
“What you are saying is that our own diligence is aiding and abetting the forgers, albeit without intent.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Mycroft replied. “Though I needed someone of your stature to confirm that it was conceivable.”
“I will gladly help in any way I can,” Mr. Dalrymple said after a moment’s hesitation.
“What is it, Mr. Dalrymple? For if I cannot fully convince you, how can I hope to convince the Queen or anyone else?”
“Though I am in scandalized
agreement that it is possible, Mr. Holmes, I continue to wonder why they did not at least attempt to vary the hues. For, while it is true that their chances of being found out were quite slim, yet here we are,” he concluded, gesturing to the coins on his desk.
“Perhaps they did attempt it. Perhaps they tried and failed. Or perhaps they could not attempt it, for they did not know. But if they did not know…”
“Then the ringleader of this enterprise may not be a coin historian at all!” Mr. Dalrymple said, finishing Mycroft’s conjecture. “But then what could he possibly be, Mr. Holmes?”
“That is the question, is it not, Mr. Dalrymple?” Mycroft said.
42
WHEN SHERLOCK AGAIN OPENED HIS EYES, HE WAS NO LONGER in the upper chamber but back on the ground floor of The Water Monkey. Though the gaslights on the wall were dim by normal standards, the room was still so much brighter than what he’d grown accustomed to that he could feel the sting of it.
Tears began to roll down his cheeks.
He blinked and looked about, as if peering at the world through the wrong end of a telescope.
On the opposite side of the room he could see the door that led to the street, and to freedom. But between him and it stood two tables, and around those tables sat eight Oriental men in business attire.
The men were playing cards; he recognized them from the previous game, but not one showed any cognizance that he existed, so that for a moment he wondered if he truly did.
What he knew for certain was that this match, unlike the former, was real. Though the players were still throwing about silver ingots as if they were ha’pennies, the pile of face-down cards was smaller, and the winnings not so evenly distributed. They also had libations of various kinds, something he had not witnessed in the faux game. And their concentration was wholly on the hands they held.
It also occurred to him, however belatedly, that he was no longer lying down but standing upright.
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