Mycroft and Sherlock

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Then he sat again, undone.

  “When Cainborn went looking for a partner to sell his drug,” he explained, “he visited opium dens for possible associates and found one in Juju Chen. I tried to push Cainborn away from us but at that point, I had no more leverage.”

  “And Cainborn’s company, Mundi Morphi? What do you know of it?”

  “Nothing. That is, very little. I heard of it but once, and that only two weeks ago,” Lin said softly. “For that is when I first learned that Cainborn was planning to leave the country for Sydney, Australia! Ah, but I have had my little revenge! It is why those men came to intimidate me! These thirteen days, I have forbidden my men to unload the goods from my ship, Orion’s Belt! Cainborn and Juju cannot fill the dolls! They cannot send more of their poison to China!”

  Ignoring the booming in his chest and ears, Mycroft stood to his feet. “How long will it take to unload the cargo and fill the dolls?”

  “Less than one day, but—”

  “Mr. Lin, you must grant them immediate permission to do so. Let them believe their threats worked. Give them no reason to doubt you.”

  “But then the ship will set sail with that poison in its belly!”

  “Promise me you will give the order today! Now!” Mycroft insisted. Then, having received the promise from his startled host, Mycroft hurried to the front door.

  52

  SHERLOCK HAD NEVER ATTEMPTED TO PICK A LOCK BEFORE. He had merely read about it, and not attentively. Thankfully, he had on hand the tools he needed, and it seemed a stunningly simple proposition.

  From his jacket pocket, he pulled out the scissors of his shaving kit and broke them in half, keeping one blade intact and forcing the other against the door until the metal bent like a hook. He inserted the point of the unbent blade into the keyway, feeling for the plate behind the bolt stump, then jerking the point upwards to release the bolt. With his other hand, he inserted the bent blade into one of the grooves, then turned and pushed out exactly as a key would.

  The handle lifted and he walked in.

  Four minutes gone.

  Cainborn’s pied-à-terre was hardly worthy of the name, being only a small room with a bed, bathtub, sofa, chair, and desk, along with a small hearth and one window where a few strands of morning light peeked meekly through the curtains.

  Sherlock’s spider-like fingers felt along the walls, but there were no secret compartments that he could discern. The decrepit old desk was covered with papers, mostly a jumble of old bills, too many even for him to peruse in the time he had left.

  Cainborn either had no secrets, or no one from which he needed to hide them. In fact, Sherlock found only one item worth noting: an expired one-way ship’s pass to Sydney, Australia. Cainborn had been scheduled to leave on the Royal Adelaide on the morning of Saturday 23 November.

  Had he departed, he would have been shipwrecked on Chesil Beach in Dorset two days later. Why had he not left?

  Then Sherlock remembered what day that had been, and he felt a chill go through him.

  He placed the ticket in his jacket pocket and bolted out of Cainborn’s lodgings.

  He hurried down the street but had to stop short, for Cainborn was waiting at the bus stop. He turned and looked right at Sherlock but did not seem to recognize him. When the crowded omnibus arrived, Cainborn stepped aboard; then a moment later stepped off again. Several minutes later he boarded the next omnibus, and this time remained inside.

  Sherlock caught it just as it was departing. He could see Cainborn wedged in the crush of passengers, as if pinned like so many boutonnières against the blue velvet seats. Moving much more quickly than a rag-picker of his advanced age should, he scurried up to the upper deck, where he took a seat amongst those willing to brave the weather in exchange for fresher air. Cainborn would not be able to disembark from the omnibus without Sherlock seeing him.

  Where are you off to, you old traitor? he thought to himself bitterly.

  * * *

  By the time Mycroft barged in on Dalrymple at The Golden Bottle, he must have looked ghastly, for the bank manager stared at him in alarm and called for water, which not one or two but three junior clerks rushed out to fetch.

  “You are to send telegrams to banks in Antwerp, Hong Kong, Paris, Istanbul, Bombay and Sydney,” Mycroft declared in a staccato delivery as he laid his hands flat on Dalrymple’s desk to keep the pesky room from spinning. He drew another ragged breath. “You must inform them that they are to do no business with an outfit called Mundi Morphi. And, as a ‘concerned colleague’—thank you,” he added to the first junior clerk who had ventured back with a glass of water, which Mycroft gulped down in one long swallow.

  “As a ‘concerned colleague,’ I was saying, one who has been in the banking business for some time, you must send an equally urgent message to the Standard Chartered Bank on Gracechurch Street that the Crown is set to investigate them for fraud and money laundering!”

  “It is?” Mr. Dalrymple exclaimed, his eyes growing larger than Mycroft thought possible.

  A second glass of water arrived, borne by another alarmed-looking little clerk. Mycroft snatched it from him.

  “Yes it is, if I have anything to say about it!” he declared, wiping his lips before hastening out.

  53

  GAINING AN AUDIENCE WITH THE QUEEN AT BUCKINGHAM Palace without an appointment required running a gauntlet manned not by warriors but by pen-wielding bureaucrats whose sole job it was to make life easier for the monarch and excruciating for everybody else.

  Mycroft was assured with barely contained condescension that Her Majesty would not see him… until, to their infinite chagrin, she did.

  In truth, the Queen did not seem terribly pleased. Perhaps it was too great a breach of protocol, his asking for an emergency audience a too-obvious reward for recent favors executed. Or perhaps she feared he would assail her again with dire talk about impending economic catastrophes.

  “Five minutes,” she told him icily after he had bowed. “Commencing now.”

  As if flicking something off her finger, she dismissed her attendant so that they were alone.

  “Your Majesty, you must send agents to the Standard Chartered Bank on Gracechurch Street. There they will find a great cache of sovereigns dated 1857 and minted in Sydney…”

  “Mr. Holmes, surely this is a matter for the Treasury…”

  “Ma’am, the sovereigns bear your likeness, but with a sprig of banksia in your hair.”

  Queen Victoria sighed. “We are aware of those coins, Mr. Holmes. And though we are not pleased with that particular… rendition of ourselves, we cannot simply remove legal tender from a legitimate bank.”

  “They are forgeries, ma’am.”

  “You can prove that, Mr. Holmes?” she asked.

  “No,” Mycroft admitted. “That is, my proof would take some study, for it is too subtle to pass muster as expeditiously as we would need it. And Standard Chartered shall argue vociferously to have the money returned—”

  “Well then we cannot see how—”

  “—but no one will ever pursue it,” Mycroft said, daring to interrupt the Queen. “Their doors will be closed within forty-eight hours. For they have one principal client, and…”

  Mycroft stopped to draw a breath, and the Queen’s eyebrows seemed to draw together into a line of severe judgment.

  “You are quite pale, Mr. Holmes. We have never seen you so undone. And the story sounds nearly as undone as you appear to be. Perhaps, like the Apostle Paul, your great learning is driving you mad?”

  “Ah, but Paul was not mad, ma’am!” Mycroft protested. “His story to Festus and King Agrippa was true! All I have told you thus far can be verified by Mr. Dalrymple, the manager of The Golden—that is, C. Hoare & Co.”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes, we too refer to it as The Golden Bottle; we are not so cut off as all that.”

  “By tonight, the ship Orion’s Belt will set sail to Shanghai with contraband and counterfeit sovereigns.
It must be stopped and searched. The owner is prepared to testify to the scheme. Aboard you will also find a man named Ju-long Chen. He will be making final inspection. He and his two associates must be arrested before disembarking. He is personally responsible for several killings in the poorer parts of the city.”

  “The Savage Gardens Murders,” she said rather archly. “We see. Anything else?”

  “Yes. A man by the name of John Cainborn has no doubt bought a one-way ticket for Australia, to depart at the end of the week. He is the principal in all of this, and he too must be stopped. Ma’am, if you have ever trusted my judgment…”

  “Mr. Holmes,” the Queen declared. “Begging does not become you. Neither does waving your laurels about. We shall confirm what we can and decide what to do from there.”

  “I pray you do so quickly—”

  “Mr. Holmes…” she said again, her tone a warning.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Mycroft said with a bow.

  * * *

  Mycroft was given an escort out so that he might not loiter one second longer than permitted. Little did his superfluous companions know how desperately he wished to depart and to be seated again, for remaining upright was proving more and more difficult.

  Reins in hand, he was about to climb into the box seat, and gratefully so, when he noticed that the horse seemed enervated. He no doubt needed more respite than he had been permitted in the last several days.

  There was a public mews close by. Mycroft could leave the horse there to recover, then hail a cab for himself back to Nickolus House.

  It meant effort on his part—effort he was not certain he could exert.

  Sighing, he rubbed a hand over the gelding’s soft muzzle and patted his forehead. The elegant, dutiful Irish Cob had been with him a year and had not yet been named.

  “Forgive me,” Mycroft murmured, pressing his forehead against the beast’s long silky nose. “You deserve better.”

  The horse huffed as if he understood, and forgave.

  Mycroft led him to the mews to rest. Then, with shallow breaths and halting steps, he returned to the street to hail a cab.

  54

  AT THE STOP NEAREST THE WATERFRONT, CAINBORN STEPPED off the omnibus. As did Sherlock, though he waited until it was well in motion again before disembarking, at which point he catapulted down the ladder, jumped into the road and sprinted to keep his feet well underneath him, where they belonged.

  It would not be a calamity if Cainborn were to spot him, for Sherlock was prepared, at any given juncture, to confront his teacher. But he was curious as to where Cainborn might be headed, and preferred to remain unseen. He slowed to a walk, keeping an eye on Cainborn from a small distance away, following his rather serpentine route and shedding his rag-picker disguise as he went.

  A few minutes later, they reached malodorous and bustling St. Katharine Docks. Sherlock watched Cainborn push his way through the crowds less than successfully, for the professor was small, with a face like a groundhog peeking out of its den. Unless one knew him by reputation, he was not the sort of presence for whom most people made room.

  Though Sherlock could only witness it from behind, the simple effort of jostling past strangers whose gazes were all but fixed above his head seemed to provoke in Cainborn a tension bordering on rage. His shoulders hunched. His neck stiffened and pushed forward, so that he seemed to be leading the rest of his body with his forehead. And Sherlock realized what he feared he should have gleaned all along: Cainborn despised being overlooked, both figuratively and literally. The admiration and fear that his students provided him in abundance, he craved from the world at large.

  For he was a magician after all, was he not?

  “The manufacture of any narcotic: the isolation of morphine from opium for example, or opium from the poppy,” he had once told a group of rapt students, “is modern-day alchemy. One transforms worthless organic matter into an essence worth more than gold.”

  Sherlock was still a milksop then, who had only just arrived at Cambridge University. Yet he had dared to quote Robert Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist: that modern chemistry was not alchemy at all, in that alchemy was haphazard.

  “Alchemists are frauds,” Sherlock had declared. “Confined to hell by Dante; whereas chemists look for cause and effect. If one relies on the scientific method, one is a scientist, not a magician.”

  Sherlock had irked every professor he had ever come across and expected no better in this case. But Cainborn had simply smiled.

  In fact, that small dispute had provoked his attention, and eventually his admiration. And Cainborn’s allowance of alchemy—the happy accident—into the cauldron of science had in turn broadened Sherlock’s imagination, until Sherlock had become his most devoted acolyte.

  He watched Cainborn pause on the street, pull out his briar pipe, fill it and light it.

  Sherlock paused as well, pulled out his briar pipe, stuffed it and lit it. Teacher and student were now walking a hundred paces apart, furiously smoking.

  “Perhaps I shall be henceforth known as ‘baker,’” Cainborn had replied upon that first meeting. “Less lofty than ‘alchemist’ and more apropos,” he had added, to the students’ amusement.

  Cainborn halted on a small promontory, where he stared intently out at the water. Sherlock followed his gaze. A steamship was navigating from mooring to quayside where a large warehouse was just opening its doors to accommodate her goods.

  The name on her bow was Orion’s Belt.

  Sherlock made his move.

  “Is that where the dolls are kept?” he whispered in Cainborn’s ear, making the professor turn with a start. “Do they hold my concoction in their Oriental bellies?” he added, his voice awash with recrimination.

  This significant moment, one which he had so long imagined, did not go precisely as planned. Firstly, the emotional toll of such a thorough betrayal proved much greater than he had anticipated. And secondly, the guilty party, instead of muttering a confession, simply glanced behind him.

  “Drown him,” he said.

  * * *

  Mere seconds later, his briar pipe sent flying, Sherlock found himself surrounded by Juju’s two henchmen, Moon Face and Roly-Poly, along with Ned and Gin. He wondered why and how they were there—might Cainborn have recognized him at the omnibus stop? Might he have alerted someone? But there was not much time for speculation. That he would be thrown into the filthy water was not in question, but he could not permit his captors to dictate the location of his prospective drowning. He would have to somehow influence their actions.

  It was a precarious balance: to alert all bystanders within hailing distance that he was being carted off by force, yet without causing so much of a hubbub that his captors lost patience and drowned him in the nearest puddle. Despite his cries, no one intervened. To a man they looked the other way and pretended things were business as usual. It did not pass Sherlock’s notice that many were Oriental. Gweilo, their expressions declared. Ghost.

  “Wish you had a needle for him,” Roly-Poly said to Moon Face, as Gin planted a large, salty hand over Sherlock’s mouth while Roly-Poly delivered a rather vicious blow to the back of his head. It seemed that Cainborn’s command had caught them unprepared.

  As advantages went, it was trifling, but Sherlock would take what he could get.

  * * *

  Douglas awakened to a timid but insistent knocking upon his bedroom door. His room was bright as day, though it could not be thus, for he could have sworn it was the middle of the night. He reached for his pocket watch on the bedside table, and indeed he and it were of one mind, for it read two a.m.

  He glared at the impertinent light streaming in through the window before realizing that it was indeed the sun, and that his watch was agreeing solely because it was not ticking, for he had neglected to wind it.

  “Yes, yes, I am coming,” he muttered, stumbling from his bed to the door. He could only thank Providence that he had fallen asleep in his clothes, as he di
d not think himself yet capable of putting on trousers without falling headlong.

  The housekeeper, a good soul of older years named Nora, whose face reminded him of a potato on which eyes, mouth, nose and ears had been haphazardly appended, was staring at him askance.

  “Douglas?” she inquired—for she did not realize that it was he who paid her salary—“I was tole by Mr. Capps not to bother if y’ez sleepin’, but a Chinaman is below, wantin’ to speak to you…”

  Douglas shook the cobwebs from his mind. “What time is it?”

  “Ten in the mornin’.”

  He had never in his lifetime slept so late. It seemed indecent. No wonder that Nora was eyeing him as if he were naked!

  Thrusting his feet into slippers, he padded to the landing and peered downstairs to see Ahn Zhang peering up at him, breathing hard.

  “Douglas!” Zhang called up to him. “Your friend, gweilo, crazy boy, he about to die!”

  * * *

  Mycroft, very nearly spent with exhaustion, had made it back to Nickolus House and was just placing one shaky foot out of his cab when he saw three men hastening out of the front door: Douglas, Huan and a sour-faced Chinese man whom he did not recognize.

  Douglas waved at him not to disembark. As Huan and the Chinese man climbed into the carriage beside him, Douglas ran up to the driver and climbed into the seat next to the man.

  “St. Katharine Docks!” he said. “And hurry!”

  55

  STRUGGLING FIERCELY BUT WITH INTENT, SHERLOCK dragged his four captors as far from Central Dock as he could manage, and close to the center of West Dock. He had almost cajoled them to the desired location when they spotted two customs agents in the distance, having a smoke by the water.

  His kidnappers stopped short.

  “Good here,” Moon Face opined.

  Sherlock dared to look around and indeed, they had reached an area where the water was deep enough, passersby were few, and the murder of an anonymous eighteen-year-old boy was not likely to attract much notice. No matter how much he flailed, they would go no further.