Young Sherlock: Night Break

by Andrew Lane

  ‘What was he looking for in these tombs?’ Phillimore asked. He glanced at Sherlock. ‘He never showed any interest in tombs or graveyards when we were children.’

  Al-Sharif asked Aziz the question in Egyptian. Aziz shrugged. Al-Sharif turned to Phillimore and repeated the shrug.

  ‘How far away are the tombs?’ Sherlock asked.

  The translator looked at the sky and shrugged. ‘We start after sundown,’ he said, ‘when it is cooler. We arrive at sunrise. Six hours.’

  ‘Yes, but how far?’

  ‘Distances, I do not know. Time for journey, I know.’

  ‘Can you take us to this tomb now?’ Phillimore asked urgently.

  ‘At night. Easier for donkeys; easier for you.’

  Sherlock glanced at Phillimore and Matty to check their agreement, and nodded reluctantly.

  The translator revealed his gappy smile again. ‘You pay in advance,’ he said. ‘In case you disappear like the last man.’

  Al-Sharif assembled a team of donkeys and arranged for bottles of water, coconuts, fruit and packages of cooked food wrapped in palm leaves to be supplied from someone he knew nearby. He assured them that there were no roads to the tombs, and that donkeys were the only practicable means of travel.

  The last thing Al-Sharif did was to fetch from storage somewhere a long package wrapped in cloth. He laid it on the ground and carefully unwrapped it, revealing four swords with curved blades. They were old, but still sharp. They had obviously been cared for.

  ‘Used by you British against the Ottomans,’ he said. ‘I have kept for many years. You take them now, for protection.’

  ‘Protection against what?’ Matty asked, looking around nervously.

  Al-Sharif shrugged. ‘Animals. Bandits. Who knows?’

  ‘Not these Ottomans, then?’

  Al-Sharif stared at Matty, frowning. ‘No – not today I think.’

  Sherlock reached out and took a sword. It felt familiar in his hand after the many days of practice with Mr Reilly on the Princess Helena. He slipped it into his belt, where it banged against his leg. Matty did the same, as did James Phillimore, after a few seconds’ thought.

  As the sun dropped towards the horizon, casting their shadows ahead of them like long, clutching fingers, they prepared to leave. The moon was already in the sky, illuminating everything with a ghostly silver light. The donkeys were lashed together with long ropes, and with Al-Sharif on the lead one, Sherlock, Matty and Phillimore cautiously mounted up and began to move. The last donkey in the line was carrying several packages – food and other things.

  ‘I could walk faster,’ Matty called from behind Sherlock.

  ‘Yes, but for how long?’ Sherlock called back.

  As darkness fell the donkeys took them through the native part of Ishmaili and out into what might have been described by a romantic as the desert, or by a practical man as a constant scrubland of sand, stones and bushes. There was nothing but darkness around them, and a profusion of stars from horizon to horizon. It was also getting significantly colder, in the absence of direct sunlight, and Sherlock found himself shivering. They seemed to be moving roughly parallel to the canal: every now and then, through gaps in the small hills of stones and piles of sand that characterized the landscape, he could see, on their left, the line of vegetation – black in the moonlight – that marked its banks. For a while the path they were taking – if it was a path rather than just a trek across country – actually led them along the top of a low ridge, and Sherlock could look down into the canal itself. It was basically a straight slash across the landscape, dug out of the sand and the rock by massive steam-driven dredging and digging machines that had been left alongside the canal every mile or so. In the darkness and the moonlight they looked like bizarre, nightmarish sculptures.

  Each machine was different from the others. They all shared characteristics in common, of course: a large pressure chamber for the steam; another chamber for the coal-driven furnace; long metal girders that had belts running along them with lots of buckets attached, which would presumably dig into the desert sand one after another in a never-ending line; jointed arms with pistons and much larger single buckets at their ends for specific excavations. Strangely, however, each machine was also different from the others – the buckets were designed differently, or the belts were arranged differently, or the whole thing was a different shape. It was as if each one had been designed and made in different factories, but to do the same job. They were even painted different colours.

  Sherlock was also amazed to see that the canal already had water in it, sparkling in the light of the moon. Somehow he had assumed that the opening ceremony for the canal would involve some kind of ceremonial smashing of a large dam at each end of the canal – Port Said on the Mediterranean and Suez on the Red Sea – and that the waters would rush along, irrigating and filling this channel through the desert, until they met in the middle and fountained up in some massive explosion of water, but that wasn’t the case. As each section of the canal was finished, it looked as if the water was introduced into it. The opening ceremony would probably, then, just be a line of French ships heading from Port Said to Suez to prove that the canal was navigable. Something of an anticlimax, Sherlock thought. At least there should be fireworks.

  They passed other travellers on their journey. Some were on donkeys, like them, and some on camels. Some were obviously European and some were Egyptians. The polite thing seemed to be for the travellers to wave at each other as they went past, but not to say anything to break the hush of the desert.

  Most of the time they were walking on sand, but sometimes they found themselves on stretches of hard rock. When Sherlock looked sideways, at the canal, he discovered that it flowed in a channel that had been carved right through the rock. That, he thought, must have been a quite incredible feat of engineering.

  He must have fallen asleep at some time, while still sitting on his donkey. The regular plodding motion was certainly soporific. Every now and then he would jerk awake, but it seemed as if the landscape around them hadn’t changed at all. It was like being trapped in a recurring nightmare, and he wondered briefly if Al-Sharif was leading them around in a big circle, telling them that it would take six hours to get to the tomb even though it was only an hour away. He had to check the position of the moon and the stars to convince himself that they were travelling in a straight line.

  He looked around, entranced. On the Princess Helena there had always been something in the way to block a view all around – a cabin, a mast, a bulkhead. Here he could literally see the horizon all around him, and the entire bowl of the sky overhead. It was a humbling sight. He felt as if they were all the size of insects crawling across some massive rumpled bed sheet, uncertain if they would ever get to the other side.

  But they did. Eventually their path diverged slightly from the line of the canal, and Sherlock realized they were heading for a small hill whose top appeared to be ragged and broken, like jagged black teeth silhouetted against the night sky, blocking out the stars. There were other hills nearby, each with their own set of broken rocks on top. For a while, as they approached the nearest hill, he thought that the broken top was just a feature of the local geography, but as they got closer he realized that this was a cluster of very old stone buildings that had been dug into the earth.

  The sky in the east had begun to take on a rosy hue as dawn approached. Al-Sharif halted his donkey.

  ‘The tombs,’ he said, indicating the buildings ahead. ‘There are many of them. I will stay here and wait.’ He looked over to where the line of the canal was still with them, an ever-present part of the landscape. ‘There will be plants there for the donkeys to eat. I will rest.’

  ‘You are not going to accompany us into the tombs?’ Phillimore asked.

  ‘I own donkeys. I am not a tour guide.’

  ‘But . . . it will be dark in there!’

  Al-Sharif went to the last donkey in the line and took a package off its back.
Returning, he unwrapped it to reveal several oil lanterns and a glass bottle filled with oil.

  ‘You wish to buy these from me?’ he asked, smiling.

  Ten minutes later the three of them were heading for the tombs, carrying lit lanterns.

  ‘We should split up,’ Sherlock said. ‘There appear to be several different tombs, and we need to cover as much ground as possible as quickly as we can. Remember – Mr Phillimore’s brother was here investigating something, but we don’t know what. He might have had an accident, or someone might have done something to him. Either way, be careful.’ He looked around for the black shadows that indicated openings. ‘Matty – you go over there, Mr Phillimore there, and I’ll take the nearest one to the canal.’

  Sherlock trudged through the sand and stones towards the black opening that he had chosen. The tomb was more like a small hill that had a doorway and some walls built into it than an actual tomb. Before he went inside, he decided to check on top, in case Jonathan Phillimore had gone up there to get a better view, fallen over and broken a leg or something.

  The sun was above the horizon now, pushing a blue haze ahead of it, and Sherlock could feel the desert beginning to heat up. He had to use his hands to help pull himself up the mound of sand and stone, and he was slightly breathless by the time he reached the top. Looking round, he could see the canal and the insectile digging machines less than a mile away. He could also see several other tombs nearer at hand, and Al-Sharif with his donkeys a little further away, but he couldn’t make out either Matty or James Phillimore.

  Closer at hand, there was something left piled up on top of the tomb, covered with a tarpaulin. He uncovered it to have a look. There, in the pile, were what looked like several circular mirrors on poles. The poles had folding stands built into them so that they could be set upright, and pivots so that the mirrors could be swivelled around but also tilted up and down. The mirrors themselves were about the size of his chest.

  He looked at the mirrors, then looked out at the horizon. Signalling devices? It made sense, but who would be signalling, and what would they be saying? In fact, who was it who had left them there in the first place? There were still too many unanswered questions about this whole business.

  Beside the mirrors was a brass telescope in an oiled cloth sack. He assumed that would be used for scanning the horizon and locating whoever it was in the far distance to whom the signals would be sent.

  Reluctantly, he left the mirrors and the telescope where they were and scrambled down the side of the tomb to where he remembered the entrance was. The light from the rising sun only penetrated a few feet into the entrance, and he held the lantern as he went in.

  The air in the tomb was warm. The stone obviously absorbed the heat of the sun during the day like a sponge absorbed water. It smelt old and dusty, and slightly rancid as well. The corridor – actually more of a tunnel, he decided – sloped gradually downward as he walked. The lantern’s light showed him walls and a ceiling made of crumbling old stone and a floor of hard packed earth. Some of the stonework had faded images on it: figures, animals and strange signs. Ahead of him was a patch of darkness where the light did not penetrate, and behind him the dwindling shape of the doorway into the tomb.

  Suddenly the light shone on a wall directly ahead, made of the same crumbling stone. The patch of darkness was now on his right: a turn in the corridor. He followed it, and now the light from the doorway had vanished and he was in a bubble of light about ten feet across that moved wherever he moved.

  He walked for about a minute, and then another wall appeared ahead of him. He had the strange impression that the darkness covering the wall was moving just as the light hit it, but when he stared at it he saw nothing but the stones, and the gaps between the stones.

  There was darkness to his left this time. He turned and kept walking at the same pace. The tunnel still sloped downward, and he thought by this time he was actually below ground level.

  A dark patch on the ground attracted his attention. He stopped to look at it. Something seemed to have been spilt there. His heart missed a beat for a moment as he thought it might be blood, but when he bent to check it didn’t look like blood. It wasn’t red, but black, and it glistened in the light. He bent down and reached out to touch it, and discovered that it was sticky. When he brought his hand back and rubbed his thumb and fingers together they slid. This was oil, but what was oil doing on the floor of a corridor in a tomb?

  Another puzzle to add to the rest.

  He straightened up, but something suddenly skittered across the wall to his right. He jerked away instinctively before he realized that it was a black beetle about the size of his thumb, running away from the sudden illumination. Another beetle appeared to his left as he moved forward, also running away. Sherlock had the sudden horrible sensation that there was an entire army of beetles moving ahead of him, just beyond the limits of the light. He tried to listen for the sound of them moving, but his breathing and his footsteps were too loud. He stopped, and held his breath, but his imagination started telling him that there was an army of beetles behind him as well, just outside the lantern’s range. He felt like he was surrounded. A sudden surge of panic welled up within him. What would happen if the lantern suddenly went out? He would be in complete darkness, surrounded by beetles, and listening to the sound of their legs brushing against the stone, as they got closer and closer to him. It seemed to be getting hotter in the corridor: he could feel beads of sweat prickling on his forehead and all the way down his back. His fingers were slick on the metal of the lantern handle.

  This was stupid. He took a deep, slow breath. He was in a stone corridor underground and there were some insects around. There were always insects underground – it was where they liked to live. There was nothing strange about this, nothing unusual, and the insects were more frightened of him than he was of them.

  He breathed out, and in again, feeling his heart slow and the terror subside.

  Something in the darkness ahead of him moaned.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sherlock’s hand twitched in surprise, almost making him drop the lantern. He tried to tell himself that it was the wind gusting through a gap in some stones, but he was below ground. Where was the wind coming from? And besides, he hadn’t felt any breeze on his face.

  He knew what Matty would have said: this was a tomb, and tombs had dead things in them.

  Every instinct in his body told him to go back, but logic told him to go on.

  So he went on.

  Another moan, louder this time.

  He almost turned to run. Instinct was telling him that the body of some dead Egyptian, desiccated by the heat of the desert and the passing centuries, and animated by some ancient sorcery, was shambling towards him along the tunnel, moaning, but logic told him that Jonathan Phillimore was lying somewhere up ahead, injured and in pain. He gritted his teeth, swallowed the panic and kept walking.

  Suddenly the floor of the tunnel vanished. He stopped, thinking there was a hole or a shaft leading downward, but in fact the tunnel floor just dropped a foot or so, and the walls on either side widened out. There was a room there. He held the lantern up and shone it into the room, trying to illuminate the far side.

  The room was no bigger than his bedroom back in Holmes Lodge, and there was an opening in the wall on the far side leading deeper into the tomb, but the thing that absorbed his attention was the man lying tied up on the floor. He was European, wearing a white suit that was crumpled and stained. A long scarf-like length of cloth had been tied around his head in order to gag him, but he seemed to have worked it loose by rubbing his cheek against the floor. He looked like a younger version of James Phillimore.

  His eyes were screwed up against the lantern light. ‘Please, God, no more,’ he cried in a cracked voice.

  ‘Jonathan Phillimore?’ Sherlock asked. ‘My name is Sherlock Holmes. I’m here with your brother to rescue you.’

  Phillimore opened his eyes in disbelief.
‘Is this some kind of trick?’ he asked weakly.

  ‘No trick. Let me help you.’

  ‘No!’ Phillimore cried as Sherlock stepped into the room and walked closer. ‘For God’s sake, don’t touch me!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Sherlock said reassuringly, but as the lantern illuminated Phillimore more brightly, he saw something moving on his clothes. For a moment he thought it was the beetles again, and was about to brush them off, but then he saw that these things were more like spiders, with swollen segments on their legs, massive pincers on either side of their heads and a tail ending in a vicious stinger that curved over their backs, ready to attack. He’d seen something like this before, in a glass case in Ferny Weston’s house outside Oxford. He hadn’t known what it was then, but Ferny had told him afterwards that these creatures were called ‘scorpions’!

  Sherlock withdrew his hand slowly. There was a scorpion on Phillimore’s chest, another on his shoulder and a third on his leg. Sherlock suspected that there were others hidden in the folds of his suit. They didn’t seem to be scared of the lantern’s light in the same way that the beetles were – they weren’t scuttling away. The light just seemed to be annoying them, making them flex their tails as if they were preparing to strike. He pulled the lantern back to try and calm them down.

  ‘They’re tied to me with cotton threads,’ Phillimore said in his cracked voice.

  ‘Why?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘So I don’t move. So I don’t try to escape. And to terrify me into talking. I have been assured that their stings aren’t fatal – just incredibly painful.’

  Sherlock could see the thin threads now, tied around the bases of the scorpions’ tails, keeping them from moving too far from Phillimore. They were tied to the buttons on his suit. ‘That’s appalling,’ he said. ‘Who did this?’