by Andy Lane
We alighted from the hansom in front of the imposing facade of the Diogenes Club - the last refuge of the most unclubbable men in England. In a moment of refreshing candour, Holmes had once told me that he would not belong to any club that would have him as a member. The Diogenes was his exception. Not a word was to be spoken inside its walls, save in the distant, sound-proof, Visitors' Room. No social interaction of any kind was permitted. Even to glance for longer than a few seconds at a fellow member was a black-ball offence. There were men - members of the aristocracy, indeed - who maintained rooms at the Diogenes, ate in its restaurant, and had not passed out of its portals or spoken to another living soul for a decade or more. The Diogenes was so private that I had heard of men who had died whilst slumped in its massive leather chairs, and their deaths not noticed until they began to decay.
Holmes led the way inside. I was immediately struck by the vast silence, so profound that it seemed like a physical presence. The entrance hall, from which a marble staircase swept up into the club proper, smelled of beeswax polish and age. A bewigged footman led us up and along a corridor that was so deeply carpeted I could only just make out the tops of my shoes. I could hear nothing, save the swish of our clothes and a deep, regular thump that I eventually realized was my heartbeat.
We came to a doorway fully twice my height and flanked by twin statues of cherubs. They were armed with little stone bows. A strange choice for the Diogenes, I reflected, believing them to be representations of Eros, until I saw the malevolent scowls upon their faces and the eagerness with which they held their weapons.
The footman indicated to us that we should enter. Years of non-verbal communication had honed his skills to the point where he could mime, with superb economy of gesture, quite complicated messages. I read in his movements that we were expected, that our host was already waiting for us, and that refreshment would be provided. I also read that our presence was only tolerated on our host's personal recommendation, and that we would be expected to behave with complete adherence to the baroque rules of the Diogenes Club.
I almost thanked him, but bit my tongue just in time.
Mycroft Holmes was standing by the window when we entered. He almost completely blocked the light from it. I had remembered him as fat, fatter than anybody I had ever met, but I had not remembered the poise with which he carried himself. He moved as if the weight meant nothing to him.
'Doctor Watson,' he said in his surprisingly deep voice as he walked towards us, 'I hope that your landlady's sprained ankle has not prevented you from breakfasting well?'
'No, thank you,' I answered automatically, then paused. 'But how . . .?'
He waved a massive spade-like hand.
'A mere bagatelle. I would not bother you with the details.'
I gazed at Holmes, who smiled slightly, and shrugged.
'Holmes has told you of her injury?' I ventured.
Mycroft sighed theatrically, as if bored by the necessity to explain his thoughts.
'Oh, very well. You have a jam stain upon your shirt, but my brother has abhorred jam since childhood and will not have it in the house. The estimable Mrs Hudson would not, I am sure, have purchased it herself.
Ergo, she is temporarily unable or unwilling to shop daily for food: a chore which, I presume, is being undertaken by a scullery maid or page-boy less familiar with Sherlock's tastes. An illness would almost certainly have resulted in her taking to her bed, but your clothes are otherwise cleaned and brushed to a high standard, suggesting that she is still taking an active part in household chores. I therefore diagnose a minor injury. The ankle was a stab in the dark, I admit, but...' and he shuddered slightly, like a trifle on a plate, '. . . given the seventeen precipitous steps one has to ascend in order to reach your front door, not an unreasonable one, I warrant.' He frowned over at his brother. 'Perhaps you would care to save your landlady the trouble of washing Watson's shirt by doing it yourself, since you so obviously caused the stain in the first place.'
Now it was Holmes's turn to look puzzled. The frown suddenly cleared, and he turned to me.
'The angle of the stain,' he said, as if explaining to me rather than to himself. 'Had a drop of jam fallen from your toast, it would have resulted in a tear-drop shaped blotch. In fact it is almost circular, indicating that the jam arrived horizontally.'
'I should have changed,' I said, embarrassed at the constant reference to my state of dress, 'but. . .'
'My brother rushed you out of the house,' Mycroft continued. 'When we were children he used to do the same with me: always wanting me to accompany him as he rushed around the garden, examining worms, looking at leaves and turning over stones. I said to him, "Sherlock, if I want to examine a worm, I can do it just as well from the comfort of an armchair, if you will do me the courtesy of bringing it here. Better still, I can reach out my arm and pull down a book which will tell me everything I could ever wish to know about worms".'
He looked over at his brother, and smiled. Beneath the fat which adorned his face and fell in folds to his collar, I could see the outlines of the same bone structure that showed so well in Holmes's features.
Holmes smiled back, rather fondly, I thought.
'I remember telling you, "It's the context that's important, Mycroft",' Holmes said, good-humouredly, "'not the worm": Mycroft swung round on his brother like battleship preparing a broadside.
'And I said, "A worm is a worm is a worm, Sherlock, no matter where you find it." Unlike a Pope, who is quite different in Austria to the Vatican.'
A heavy pause fell across the room, broken by the arrival of the footman with a tray containing a teapot and several fine china cups.
'You cannot possibly have deduced that we have met the Pope,' I said, when the footman had left. The brothers were locked in an eye-to-eye battle of wills. Knowing the natural truculence of the Holmes family, I could see that it could go on all day, if I did not interrupt.
'Quite right,' Holmes said. 'Somebody has brought Mycroft a juicy fat worm.'
'You are meddling in affairs of state,' Mycroft said.
'You have no right to interfere,' Holmes snapped. 'I have been retained in a private capacity.'
'That is equivalent to saying that the amorous predilections of Prince Edward, Duke of Clarence and Avondale are his own concern!' Mycroft crossed to the window again, so that the light was behind him, throwing his vast shadow across the room. 'The monarchy and the state are the same.
They cannot be separated. The same holds true for the Pope and the Vatican. Did you not wonder why the Supreme Pontiff travelled half-way across Europe in secret to consult you? Did it not occur to you that the commission, simple though it may have seemed, might have implications which could rock Europe? Help yourself to tea, by the way.'
I did so, wondering what the amorous predilections of Prince Edward, Duke of Clarence and Avondale actually were.
'Balderdash!' Holmes threw himself into an armchair. 'The Foreign Office is merely annoyed because the Pope came to me rather than to it.'
'The Foreign Office be damned!' Mycroft exploded. 'They couldn't find a cow in a field. The Queen is annoyed because his Eminence Pope Leo XIII didn't come to her!'
'So,' Holmes whispered, 'as I suspected.'
Mycroft shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. 'Yes,' he said, 'as you suspected.'
'The Diogenes?'
'Of course.'
'Please,' I interrupted, 'if it is not too much trouble, can somebody explain to me what you are talking about?'
Mycroft glanced at Holmes, who nodded slightly. I felt as if I had been given some sort of endorsement.
'Please do not discuss what you are about to hear outside these walls,'
Mycroft began. 'I am telling you this only to ensure that my brother is aware of the truth of my position, rather than his own deductions, and because I am aware, following your commissions for the Royal Families of Scandinavia, Russia and Holland, of your honesty and integrity.'
I nodd
ed, feeling rather proud of the faith he put in me.
'As you may know, there are certain people attached to the Foreign Office who make it their business to find out other peoples' business. One might call them a kind of secret service.'
I thought back to the Orient Express, and the Reverend Hawkins. How mysterious are the wheels of power.
'Many countries have them, Doctor Watson. Germany has agents in England even as we speak, as does Russia. We have had our own agents abroad for nigh on four hundred years, now. We operate under a rather severe handicap, however. We are a decent race.' He snorted. 'The average Englishman thinks that there is something rather sordid and dishonourable about spying, and that pretty much ties our hands as to how effective we can be.'
'There is something sordid about it,' I exclaimed. 'The whole idea is . . .
well, just not cricket!'
'The Germans don't play cricket,' he said, scowling. 'And neither do the Russians. Unfortunately, the Foreign Office do. They run the whole thing like an Eton game. You've never seen such a group of ineffective stuffed shirts. When Thomas Beach, one of their best agents, infiltrated the Irish Republican Brotherhood and reported that the Fenians had entered into diplomatic relations
with the Czar of all the Russias, and that they had actually built a submersible boat with which to attack Royal Navy vessels, what did they do? Nothing! Her Majesty was furious when she found out!'
'Her Majesty?'
'Our Sovereign is a shrewd woman, Doctor Watson, and should not be underestimated. She is not blind to the domineering ambitions of Czar Nickolas I and Kaiser Wilhelm II, and she is also perfectly well aware that the Fenians pose a greater threat to the stability of the monarchy than the Anarchists.' He hesitated briefly, wondering, perhaps, how much to say.
'Her Majesty has for some time been distrustful of what her prime ministers have been telling her. She never had much respect for poor Gladstone. "He speaks to me as if I were a public meeting," she once told me, and has publicly questioned whether he is fit to lead her country. I must say,'
Mycroft added parenthetically, 'that I share her views. Not five years ago the Prime Minister proposed to the Cabinet that a Flotilla of the Royal Navy be sent to look for Atlantis!' He frowned. 'Where was I? Yes, some years ago Her Majesty decided to set up what, for want of a better word, might be called her own "intelligence organization". She, or rather, her advisors,' and Mycroft modestly cast his gaze downwards at this point, 'knew that it could not be funded from public money, lest the public protest at a secret organization in their midst. Approaches were made to the oldest and wealthiest families in the land. A cover was sought: an establishment above reproach through which this tiny band of patriots could operate.'
'And the Diogenes . . .?' I was aghast.
'...Is that establishment. Like an iceberg, Doctor Watson, nine-tenths of what goes on here is beneath the surface.'
'I had already deduced most of your story' Holmes said from the far side of the room. He had poured himself a cup of tea and was sprawled in his armchair. 'Indeed, I have been following your successes with some interest. It would seem that, wherever trouble exists in the world, a member of the Diogenes Club is not far away. I notice, in fact, that the ill-fated last voyage of the Fenians' submarine vessel coincided with the honeymoon in New Jersey of one Charles Beauregard, whom I have seen dining here on numerous occasions.'
'Very perceptive, Sherlock,' Mycroft said, clapping his hands together gently. 'Very perceptive. Now, I have been frank with you. Perhaps you could return the compliment.'
Holmes stared at his brother for a long moment.
'Perhaps we can trade information,' he said finally. 'Certain pieces of the puzzle still elude me.'
He steepled his hands together, lay back in his chair until his gaze was directed at the ceiling and sketched the bare bones of the matter for his brother. When he had finished and Mycroft had asked a few incisive questions, Holmes reached into his jacket and extracted the list of Library patrons which Mr Jehosephat Ambrose had provided us with.
Mycroft's eyes scanned the list, stopping at one particular name. He glanced up and locked gazes with Holmes. They shared a long moment of unspoken communion.
'An instructive list,' Mycroft said finally, returning it to Holmes. Even I could spot the ironic understatement in his voice - a tone directed, I was sure, at his brother. 'You have questioned both the Doctor and Mrs Prendersly, but only Mrs Prendersly is dead. If we take as our assumption that she was indeed murdered, it would follow that she possessed information that the Doctor did not, and was killed in case she might pass the information on. It would also follow that Professor Challenger is not our man.'
'How so?' Holmes challenged.
'Because he set sail for South America last week on one of his scientific expeditions.'
'He could be working as part of a gang,' I said.
'Unlikely,' Holmes snapped. 'Remember William of Occam's suggestion that one should not multiply logical entities without reason. No, for the moment we will assume that our man is working alone.'
'Is your Doctor a tall chap with a shock of white hair and a penchant for velvet smoking jackets?' Mycroft asked.
'No,' I said, mystified. 'Why?'
'There's a chap who I see down in the reading room sometimes, calls himself the Doctor. Thought it might be one and the same. This one's a bit of a wag: brings newspapers into the Club dated some ten or twenty years hence and reads them as if he'd never seen them before. Got some of the members quite worried, I can tell you.'
'Apart from the coincidence in names,' Holmes said, leaning forward and fixing his brother with a hard stare, 'is there any reason why he should be the same Doctor?'
'Well spotted, Sherlock. I do have a reason. You see, a good half of the people on this list are members of the Diogenes!'
Holmes stood bolt upright, and I must admit that I was taken aback. The entry requirements for the Diogenes were notoriously stringent. To find that many of our suspects were regularly gathered together under one roof . . .
'Who?' Holmes asked succinctly.
'If we ignore the Doctor, then Challenger, Baron Maupertuis and. .'
Mycroft trailed off. Holmes nodded. I felt completely left out. There was a name on the list that was being kept from me.
Mycroft Holmes pulled a discreet velvet cord, and within seconds a footman had entered the room. Mycroft murmured a few words, and the man left.
'I have asked Baron Maupertuis to join us, if he is on the premises,' Mycroft informed us.
'What sort of a man is he?' Holmes asked.
'A strange sort,' Mycroft replied. 'Rich - exceptionally so - and a bit of a recluse. He is of Dutch extraction, and owns the Netherlands-Sumatra Company, but has recently become a naturalized British subject. Seems to be trying to be more British than the British: friends with the Prince of Wales, goes to Ascot, you know the form. We suspect that he is mixed up in some shady business deals, which is why we encouraged him to join the Diogenes.'
'Because you wanted his help?'
'Don't be clever, Sherlock. We wanted to keep an eye on him.'
As we waited, Mycroft poured me a glass of heavy, sweet sherry, and made small talk about the weather. He was not very good at it and I was glad when the door reopened.
The man who walked into the room was tall, excessively so, and thin to the point of emaciation. His face was bloodless and completely without expression - so immobile, in fact, that it could have been carved in bone.
His hair was long, ash-blond and brushed straight back: the irises of his eyes were so pale as to be almost invisible, so that his pupils were black pinpricks floating on a white void. His morning attire was impeccable. He did not offer to shake hands.
'Mycroft,' he said finally. His voice was like the wind in dry reeds. 'I trust that this is important. I have another appointment.'
'I wished you to meet my brother, Sherlock,' Mycroft said. I could tell that even he, the imperturbable Hol
mes, was put out.
Maupertuis's gaze settled on Holmes and he nodded slightly. Although his expression did not change by one iota, something new had been added to the atmosphere of that room, an indefinable but ominous cloud.
'Charmed,' Holmes said, sniffing slightly. 'I was saying to my brother only a moment ago that we both belong to the same library.'
Maupertuis said nothing.
'A library in Holborn,' Holmes continued.
No reaction.
'I don't remember ever seeing you there. Do you go often?'
