by Andy Lane
Maupertuis reached a skeletal hand into his waistcoat pocket and retrieved an ornate gold hunter, which he consulted. I noticed that the rest of his body did not appear to move at all. He swivelled slightly so that he was looking at Mycroft.
'Time presses,' he whispered. 'You understand.'
He turned to go, and as he did so, his gaze swept across me like the beam of a lighthouse. I felt as if insects were crawling across my skin. The feeling lasted but a moment, and then he was gone.
'He did not blink,' Holmes said finally. 'Most instructive.'
'A rum character,' Mycroft said. There was a fine beading of perspiration across his forehead. he took out a handkerchief and mopped it abstractedly across his face. 'I've never got his measure.'
'I wonder whether his appointment was real or feigned,' I said. 'It occurred to me that he might have wished to avoid further questioning, and invented a spurious excuse to leave.'
Holmes crossed to the window.
'We may be able to tell something by the way he . . . ah! Yes, there he is now, climbing into a hansom.'
Holmes suddenly leaned forward, like a pointer dog on the trail of a stag.
'Hello, what's this!'
Mycroft and I moved to join Holmes. Mycroft, being nearer, got to his brother's side first, effectively blocking my view.
'Most instructive,' Mycroft murmured.
'You noticed?' Holmes. said.
'Of course.'
'What's happening?' I bleated.
Mycroft moved aside and I squeezed past him to gaze along Pall Mall at a swaying two-wheeler with a baronial crest upon its side.
'I see nothing,' I said.
'You see nothing now,' Holmes corrected. 'The hansom was listing sideways before Maupertuis entered. His weight evened the suspension out.'
'I don't . . . Ah! I see! You suspect that the hansom was already occupied?'
'I suspect nothing,' Holmes replied. 'I know. The science of deduction allows no room for suspicions. A fact is either true or it is not true. Did you not notice how Maupertuis was in a hurry to leave us for another engagement? I would suggest to you that he was due for an assignation with another person. The coach is obviously his, judging by the crest, and contains the person with whom he is meeting.'
It would be instructive to know the identity of the other man,' Mycroft said ruminantly. 'Save that he is elderly and does not often visit London, I can tell nothing about him.'
'He is of above average height,' Holmes added.
'Or thinner than the norm,' Mycroft riposted. Both brothers smiled. I was at a loss. I wanted to ask them how they could tell all this from the tilt of a hansom cab, but the answer would only make me feel a fool for not being able to tell myself.
Just then the hansom described a wide half-circle and began to trot towards the Diogenes again. As it passed, I craned my neck in an attempt to see its occupants. Holmes and his brother had moved back into the room, and so I was the only one to see the silhouette of a hooded and robed figure sitting next to the Baron - the same figure that I had seen in the Library of St John the Beheaded.
Chapter 6
In which Holmes and Watson make a subterranean voyage and a footman is fired.
'I need to see that man,' Holmes snapped after I had imparted the news to him. 'It may be that there is nothing suspicious in this meeting - after all, we already know that the Baron is a member of the Library. Never the less, a hooded man is a suspicious figure of almost gothic proportions. Where will Maupertuis be heading now?'
'Sherlock, I'm not even my brother's keeper, let alone that of a foreign nobleman. Come, we will ask the doorman.'
Moving quickly for a man of his build, Mycroft led the way out of the Visitor's Room, along hushed corridors and down the wide marble staircase to the foyer of the Diogenes Club. Whilst we waited by the main desk, he beckoned the doorman to the steps just outside the door and flung questions at him. As he gestured to us to join him outside the club doors, I saw him slip the man a shilling.
'Jessup here says that the passenger was in shadow, but he heard the Baron tell the driver to head for an address in Euston.'
'Then we must get there before him.' Holmes looked around for a cab, but there were none to be seen.
'He has a good few minutes start,' Mycroft said. 'By the time you get there, they will have entered the house, and you may never see the other passenger. Unless...'
'Unless what?'
Instead of answering, Mycroft led us both back inside the confines of the Diogenes and through the reading room - a large, oak-lined study in whose deep leather armchairs sat a cross-section of the most important, the most unconventional and the most unpleasant men in the Empire. Skirting around the back of an armchair, I found myself looking at a familiar face.
The Doctor.
He was standing in front of the armchair. Its occupant was reading a copy of the Times. From my position behind him I could see that he was attempting to finish some kind of word puzzle - a grid composed of black and white squares into which he was inserting words. He had one set of spaces left to fill, and from the look of him he had been stuck for some time.
The Doctor was busy writing something on a piece of paper. Seeing me, he put a finger to his lips. I looked down at the man in the chair. His hair was white and he was wearing a black velvet smoking jacket. Stumped by the clue, he rubbed the back of his neck in annoyance.
The Doctor coughed slightly. Immediately, the paper was lowered and the man in the chair glowered at him.
The Doctor held up his piece of paper.
14 Across, it read, Sesquipedalian.
'You bounder!' the man expostulated. The Doctor scurried off, grinning, and the white-haired man leaped to his feet as a number of irate footmen converged on him. I ran after Holmes and Mycroft, ashamed of the Doctor's juvenile antics.
Mycroft took us down a side corridor. A few yards along it was a door marked Billiards Room.
Mycroft took a key from his waistcoat pocket and unlocked it, then led the way inside.
Excepting a billiards room, I was taken aback to find a gas-lit and carpeted stairway. I stumbled down the first few stairs into Holmes's back. In front of me, over Holmes's head, I could see Mycroft's huge bulk filling up the space from stairs to ceiling and from wall to wall. As we walked I wondered what would happen if he got stuck.
How could we get him out? Thank God he was in front, otherwise how would we get out?'
We walked on, and on. The stairs led down, seemingly to hell itself. A sudden whoosh in the distance made me jump. Seconds later a warm breeze caressed my face.
'Where are we going?' I whispered to Holmes.
'Hanged if I know,' he replied over his shoulder, 'but I doubt that it's the wine cellar.'
Light blossomed around the edges of Mycroft's body and within seconds we were standing in a spacious, bricklined cellar from whose ceiling an incongruous chandelier dangled. Looking back up the stairs, I could see a glimmer of light. The distance was not as great as I had feared. Relieved, I looked around.
Comfortable sofas lined the walls, and tables held copies of the day's newspapers, but my eyes were caught and held by the semicircular cast-iron object which protruded from the far wall. It was about four feet across and festooned with a number of smaller pipes, one of which seemed to have a knurled wheel attached. I moved closer. It appeared to be some form of hood and, kneeling and gazing into it, I could see that it was the final few feet of a tunnel. The rest of the tunnel, which was lined with cast iron, vanished into darkness after a few feet. A large hatch, hinged at the top, hung over the opening and two rails, about three feet apart, emerged from it and crossed the cellar almost to where we stood. Sitting on the rails was what I can only describe as an large artillery shell on wheels.
'Barker?' Mycroft roared. We were obviously in another part of the Diogenes Club in which speech was permitted.
'Ere, Guvnor!'
A small man emerged from the tunnel. His skin was p
ale, his eyes dark, and he was dressed, incongruously, in immaculate morning dress.
'Be wantin' a trip, will ya?'
Without waiting for an answer, he threw some kind of catch and opened the entire top of the wheeled shell. The interior was padded with velvet and contained two small armchairs.
'All aboard that's goin' aboard,' he said.
I looked questioningly at Holmes. He, in turn, looked at his brother.
'Get in,' Mycroft said. Holmes shrugged, and did so. I, with some trepidation, followed.
The armchairs were a tight fit. I gazed up out of the shell at the chandeliered ceiling.
'A pneumatic railway built for the Post Office and first used in 1863,' Mycroft explained, beaming down at us. 'They used it to move post from Euston to the General Post Office at St Martin's le Grand. They abandoned it in 1880.
The Diogenes bought it - through one of our members, of course - and extended the line to here. Excess air pressure - provided by the London Hydraulic Power Company from their pumping station in Pimlico - pushes the shells along, and a partial vacuum in front of them aids the process.'
'For what purpose?' I gasped.
'To get people in and out of the building unobserved,' Holmes said. I could tell from his tone that he, too, felt a modicum of discomfort.
'Quite right,' Mycroft said. 'Certain meetings held on these premises have quite distinguished guest lists. It would not do to have them observed.
And...' his voice hardened,'... it would not do to have any mention of this private railway in the public domain. It shall remain our little secret.'
He made a signal to Barker.
'First stop Euston, a short walk away from Drummond Crescent, where Baron Maupertuis is making for. Pleasant journey, gentlemen. You will forgive me for not joining you.'
The lid came down.
'If anybody had told me this morning,' I said with some venom, 'that I would be shot like a bullet beneath London before lunch, I would have called them a liar.'
'I confess that the experience is a novel and unexpected one.' Holmes voice was flattened by the padding. 'Still, look on it as a part of life's rich tapestry.,'
'Thank you,' I retorted. 'I'll remember that.'
We seemed to roll forward by a few feet, and a heavy thud behind us suggested that the hatch had been closed.
'I seem to remember reading about something like this in a Jules Verne book,' I said lightly, trying to keep my spirits up.
'Verne got it all wrong,' Holmes said in a level voice. 'At the pressures generated in his manned rocket shell, the occupants would have been squashed into raspberry preserve with a fraction of a second.'
There was a definite pressure building up in my ears. I swallowed. The pressure eased, only to mount a few seconds later.
'Very reassuring,' I gasped. 'Any last words?'
'The world has not seen the last of Sherlock Holmes,' my friend said. I wasn't sure if it was a threat or a promise.
There was a loud thud behind us and the vehicle rocked on its wheels. The armchair felt as if it was being pushed hard against my back. Something roared loudly in the background and the vehicle shook as if some unseen creature were caressing it with rough hands. The temperature rose suddenly, bringing a fine dew of perspiration to my brow. My fingers clutched at the arms of the chair and my head was forced back against the padding, making me think, for some obscure -reason, of a dentist's surgery.
I clenched my neck muscles and tried to force my head forward. It was hard. I felt as if Mycroft Holmes were sitting on my chest. I strained harder.
Suddenly the weight vanished from my chest. I catapulted forward, banging my nose against the back of Holmes's chair. Stars exploded in the pitch darkness. The beast outside was roaring louder now, and I had to brace myself against the sides of the vessel to stop myself sliding off the velvet upholstery. Then we were slowing down, and the tone of the roar changed.
Within seconds we were stationary and the hinged lid was being pulled open from outside.
'Ere ya go, mate.'
A tattooed arm reached in and hauled me like a kitten into a room that was the twin of the one we had left. Holmes waved away the man with the tattoos, and clambered out under his own steam. I looked at him and laughed.
'If you find the experience so amusing,' he snapped, 'perhaps you would like to make the return journey.'
I suppressed my laughter. Part of it was sheer hysteria, but a large portion was due to the velvet weave pattern embossed across Holmes's forehead.
I hadn't been alone in hitting my head.
We staggered out into Drummond Crescent and found ourselves outside a small, anonymous house. We looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
'Quicker than a cab,' I gasped, 'and so much cheaper!'
'Gad, I've a small place a few hundred yards away where I keep make-up and disguises,' he said between huge choking guffaws. 'And to think, I never knew...'
We were still laughing when a black hansom cab trotted past us. Holmes sprinted after it and I, because of the wound I had sustained in Afghanistan, followed as best I could. The hansom rounded the corner and, shortly afterwards, so did Holmes. By the time I reached the corner the hansom was stationary and the door to a small terraced house was swinging shut half-way down the street.
Holmes had taken off his top hat and flung it to the pavement.
'Damn and blast!' he shouted as I approached. 'Damn and blast! I could not make out his face. Too late, by a few seconds.'
He walked along to where the carriage stood and looked up at the closed door. I joined him, mindful of the hulking figure of the driver atop the carriage.
'I know that address,' Holmes said. His lips moved as he tried to recollect the memory, then a slow smile spread across his face.
'We may be in luck after all, Watson. Follow me.'
With that he bounded up the stairs to the front door of the house.
'But Holmes . . . Good Lord, you can't just barge in there, man!'
'Why not?' he shouted down as he rang the bell. The door swung open just as I joined him, revealing a rather seedy-looking footman whose hair was slicked down and who grinned at us in a most familiar way. I had been about to apologize for Holmes's behaviour but, after a short exchange of words, he walked in as if he owned the place. I followed, confused.
The walls of the hall were papered in a red flock design that showed patches of wear. The carpet had once been opulent, but now looked threadbare and out of fashion. There was no sign of Maupertuis and his companion, if, indeed, this was the house they had entered. A stairway led upstairs. Through a connecting door I could see a large drawing room whose walls were thankfully half-hidden by drapes. I say 'thankfully' as there were children lounging on sofas, and the murals which had been painted on the walls were of fauns and satyrs in positions of amorous entanglements with partially clad nymphs of a shockingly young age. I am no prude - my experience of women covers many nations and three separate continents - but I was appalled by the almost medical explicitness with which those paintings were rendered.
And then I looked at the children.
Most were girls, although three or four angelic boys fluttered long lashes at me. They were lolling around in postures of provocative abandon, dressed in short frocks. Very short frocks and nothing else.
I began to feel sick.
'Does anything take your fancy?' said a voice behind me. I turned. Behind me stood a woman of uncertain years wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made out of the same threadbare fabric as the flock wallpaper in the hall. She was short and wide, and her mouth was a rouged slash across her face.
'We've got some loverly little ones here, gentlemen, and clean too, if you take my meaning. Whatever your tastes, we can satisfy them. Blondes or redheads, bold or shy. If you want them fresh, well, that comes a little extra, gents, but fresh you can have.'
She gazed up at us with bulging, frog-like eyes. I wanted to lash out at her with my stick, but re
mnants of gentility and Holmes's presence by my side made me stay my hand.
'Thank you,' he said. He had roughened his voice and, looking at him from the corner of my eye, I could see that he was holding himself differently, disguising his height and suggesting some congenital deformity of the spine. 'Perhaps we could take some time in choosing.'
She winked at him.
'Certainly, sir. I can see that you're a connersewer, a proper connersewer.
Take your time. Talk to 'em, if you like. Give us a call when you're ready, and I'll have a room put at your disposal.'
