“Rather like poking a stick into a wasps’ nest, I should think,” I ventured.
“It may be, or it may be more a badger’s earth, and my opponent will make himself known in an obvious and belligerent manner.” The satisfaction he felt at this prospect would have unnerved me a year ago; now it only made me wince a bit.
“Have you formed some opinion upon it?” I asked, trying to imagine what scraps of information he had pieced together, if this were the case.
“I would be foolish to do so, Guthrie. I am well-aware that, like it or not, I must take the cautious approach and be doubly certain of all my facts before I draw any conclusions. At present, facts are in short supply, a situation that these telegrams are intended to correct. So ready yourself for a hectic ten minutes. I, for one, will be glad of a short respite while you are about your labors.” He yawned as if to prove he meant it.
I took the papers he proffered. “Other than Tyers and Tschersky. what other responses are you expecting?”
“I am expecting none; I am envisioning two or three different possibilities, which is another matter entirely.” Mycroft Holmes sighed heavily. “If we were not on this train, matters could be handled very differently indeed. But we are here and here we must stay, so I will deal with our problems within the limitations imposed upon us.” He fiddled with his watch-fob. “How is our ... our invalid?”
“I did not stop in compartment four returning from the lounge. I must assume it is much the same as before.” I heard that stuffy note come back into my voice again and was about to apologize when Mycroft Holmes stopped me.
“Don’t fash yourself, dear boy. The lady is safe as houses.” He beamed at me. At another time I might have questioned his motive, but on this occasion I did not, for I was convinced of his kindly intentions.
“Yes; I understand that.” I had to steady myself as the train began to brake.
“Good. By the way, what news from the lounge?” He gave me his polite attention.
“Nothing that seems of bearing on our work,” I said, and outlined what I had overheard.
“Um. Just as well.” He clapped his hands together. “We’ll be in Leeds Station shortly. Make yourself ready, Guthrie. This may prove to be our most crucial stop.”
“Very well,” I said, and readied myself by putting the texts for the telegrams into my portfolio.
“Damned useful thing, that portfolio of yours,” Mycroft Holmes remarked. “So very obvious it is unobvious.” He gestured me to the door and put his hand to his forehead. “I am more than ready for my supper; I admit it readily.”
I had little appetite but I knew it would be prudent to eat, so I nodded. “The second seating will begin shortly after we leave Leeds. I will take Miss Gatspy’s place as soon as I have delivered the telegrams to you,” I reminded him.
“Yes, yes.” He looked toward the windows where houses and undecipherable buildings flashed by, some showing well-lit windows, some dark as tombs.
I felt the train continue to slow and heard the signal bells as we approached the station, now going quite slowly. I swung around toward the door. “I am ready, sir.”
“That you are, my boy, that you are,” said Mycroft Holmes looking far more relaxed and confident than I would have thought possible. “We’ll have a pleasant time at supper, no doubt of it.” With that he motioned to me to leave his compartment.
I complied at once, sensing that he was filled with more concerns than he would impart to me until he had read the next installments of telegrams. I had come to know when he was holding himself in readiness and saw that now was just such an instance. As the lights of the station platform struck me, I saw that a number of policemen were waiting, apparently for the arrival of the Flying Scotsman, for as the train braked itself at last, I saw two of the uniformed constables move forward, one of them carrying a truncheon. What on earth required such preparation? I was puzzled, for I supposed that the police were finished with the passengers. Then a more sinister possibility struck me—if the police were here to intervene in Prince Oscar’s journey, there was clearly something very much amiss.
The conductor bawled out the name of the station from the platform between cars; the engine hissed and billowed masses of white steam into the evening air, and the sound of opening doors was heard throughout the train.
As soon as the steps were down, I was off the train and moving quickly to the telegraph office. I did not run, for I knew it would draw attention to me in a way I would find most inconvenient. It was an effort not to watch the progress of the constables over my shoulder, but I managed.
“Guthrie?” said the telegraph operator with a stunning lack of attention; he was a pudding-faced man nearing forty and grown lackadaisical. “No, I don’t think I—”
“Look again, man,” I said sharply. The last thing I wanted was to deal with a clerk who was slipshod in his work. My first impression of this fellow was that he was just such a one. “Guthrie. P. E. Guthrie,” I repeated, leaning on the high counter between us.
He shrugged to show his lack of concern, but went through the motions of looking, and this time feigned surprise when he put his hand on four telegrams. “This will be what you want, then?” He held them out to me, plainly waiting for a tip for his service.
I took the telegrams and glanced at the various returns on them, and selected the appropriate message for Tschersky. “Thank you,” I said absently.
“You’re a busy lad, having so much to do.” He tapped his finger like a musician warming up.
I ignored his implied slight. “I have a few to be sent,” I said sharply, handing him the papers Mycroft Holmes had just entrusted to me. “Put them on your wire at once. The train is badly behind schedule and there are those in London who must be notified of our delay.”
“Patience is a virtue,” the man said with a show of unconcern that annoyed me.
“And sloth is a vice,” I added for him as I put the telegrams into my portfolio. “Your superiors would not like to receive complaints of you, I am sure.”
His posture grew straighter. “You have no cause to do that.”
“Not if you set out to send the telegrams at once,” I said, ignoring his look of ill-usage. As the man began to work his key, I said, “Plenty of constables about.”
“Oh, aye. They’re here at the behest of some brass-buttons in Bedford. They’re looking for a barman from the train. Something about a murder on the train. But you’d know more about that than I, I suppose.” He was glad of this interruption and would have taken more advantage of it if I had not made a point of pulling out a five-pound note and holding it where he could see it. He sighed and went on with his task.
The policemen were milling about now, and one of them began to rap out orders I could not hear. The constables were clearly distressed about some aspect of what they had discovered. In a short while, the Sergeant came into the station and went toward the Stationmaster’s office, closing the door forcefully.
“I wonder what that is about?” the telegraph operator said speculatively. He glanced in my direction, but I did nothing to encourage him.
“I haven’t a notion,” I said, hoping I did not sound as curious as I, in fact, was. “Keep on with your work.”
The fellow scowled, and I did my best to ignore his evident displeasure. Only when he had keyed the last of the messages did I pay him for his efforts. I then prepared to return to the train only to hear the Stationmaster announce that the train would be delayed for twenty minutes while the police conducted a thorough search of the cars for the other barman.
So Whitfield was missing, I thought, and decided it alarmed me to hear this. I decided Mycroft Holmes needed to be informed of this at once. With that intention in mind, I went back across the platform and climbed aboard the train once again.
Mycroft Holmes was pacing the confined space of
compartment two. For a man of his height and size, the compartment provided very little room for an outlet of his strain. I paused in the doorway until Holmes came to a halt. “I have telegrams, sir,” I said, patting my portfolio just above my gold initials.
“Good.” He held out his hand for them even before I had closed the door behind me. “How many?”
“Four. Tyers, Commander Winslowe, Superintendent Spencer, and Tschersky. Nothing from anyone at the Admiralty,” I said as I gave them to him.
“Too many, with or without the Admiralty; we might as well head a parade,” he grumbled. “Well, let’s have a look at them.” He opened the first, from Tyers, and read through it swiftly. “Damn,” he said conversationally.
“What?” I asked nervously; he was apprehensive, and I caught it from him.
“There seems to have been a problem.” He sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“How ... how bad is it?” I did not want to add to his distress, but I could not deny my apprehension. “What does Tyers say?”
Mycroft Holmes did not answer at once. “I must assume that Tyers has kept this to himself. Otherwise I am certain we would not be—” He stopped and looked up at me. “Guthrie, we must have a word with Miss Gatspy.”
He did not say my Miss Gatspy, and that caused me a moment of dismay. Whatever he needed to learn from her, it superseded his good-tempered gibes. “We will be dining with her shortly—surely the matter can wait.”
“Yes, but it is hardly an appropriate topic for table conversation.” He snapped his fingers. “We will go to Herr Schere’s compartment as soon as we are moving again.”
I coughed delicately. “That may not be for some time,” I said. “It would seem that Whitfield is missing, and apparently there is a search on for him.”
“Whitfield? Missing?” Mycroft Holmes slapped the seat of his bench. “How very irregular.”
“Does it worry you?” I wanted to hold my breath as I waited for his reply.
“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “It depends on whether or not the drink he was pilfering is found. If it is and he is not, I shall be very worried indeed.”
“Pilfering drink?” I exclaimed, and at the same instant recalled the cartons of partially opened bottles behind the bar. “You are saying he—”
“Stole from the railroad? Yes, most certainly I am.” He smiled at me. “There are probably half a dozen publicans between London and Edinburgh who have a cozy arrangement with Whitfield. He saves an ounce or two at the bottom of every bottle and off-loads them to men along the way. Each makes a small profit in the process, and if it is not too greedily done, the North Eastern turns a blind eye to the enterprise. It is not uncommon, I assure you.” He put his hands together, the remaining telegrams held between them. “If it is Whitfield and not the drink that is truly missing, I fear our enterprising young barkeep may have stumbled upon a true villain, not a venal publican.”
I felt confusion mount within me. “But why should—” I stopped myself. “If the drink is still on the train and he is not, he has met with more than he bargained for.”
“Precisely,” said Mycroft Holmes as he opened the telegram from Tschersky. “Oh, poor operator,” he exclaimed in mock dismay as he held the flimsy sheet out to me.
Puzzled I took it, and glanced down to see ... Ny pravda lhi? Vy pruhvy ... “In transliterated Russian and in coded phrases?” I recognized the first—“Isn’t it true?”—but I had not had enough time to manage the rest, and the smattering of Russian I had acquired in my travels was not sufficient to make reading such a message easy for me.
“How very like him,” said Holmes with a sigh of approval. He was silent as he read, occasionally pausing to study the words carefully. “Most illuminating.” He folded the telegram and put it in his inside waistcoat pocket; whatever Yvgeny Tschersky had said, Mycroft Holmes regarded it as singularly important. Looking up at me he went on. “He has answered my question, for which I am grateful, and it is now more imperative than ever that we speak with Miss Gatspy. Little as I like the idea, she may hold the key to our situation.”
As high a regard as I had for Miss Gatspy’s capabilities, I did not see that it followed that she held the solution to our quandary. “Why should she—”
“Guthrie,” Mycroft Holmes interrupted patiently, “I make full allowance for your enthrallment, but in this case you must permit me to do as I think necessary in regard to your Miss Gatspy.”
I could feel my cheeks grow red. “It isn’t like that at all,” I began, then saw his heavy bow arch and gave up. “You will have your joke, sir,” I said, and waited.
“Those fellows in the Golden Lodge have access to all sorts of material that you and I cannot readily obtain.” Mycroft Holmes tapped the telegram with his finger. “I hope she might be able to procure a few smidgens of information that will simplify our search for this would-be assassin—or assassins, if what Tschersky tells me is correct.”
“Assassins?” I repeated. “There is more than one?” The idea had seemed improbable when it was first proposed; but if Tschersky endorsed it, I had to reconsider the situation.
Holmes nodded heavily. “From what Tschersky tells me, there is a pair of them, working in tandem, one functioning as a decoy, the other as the killer. I had hoped this was not the case, but there can be no doubt. Tschersky has a great deal of information about them. They do not always take the same roles. They are said to be resourceful and capable of improvising if all is not as they expected. And they are quite ruthless. The Russians believe the pair have accounted for more than fifteen highly placed individuals in more than a dozen countries. If the Russians have such knowledge, I must suppose the Golden Lodge does, too. And it would explain Miss Gatspy’s presence on what should be ordinary escort duty.” He opened the third telegram from Commander Winslowe, reading it quickly and nodding once when he was finished. Then he opened the telegram from Superintendent Spencer and his expression darkened. “The bloody fool!” he exclaimed, and read through the telegram a second time. “Fool!” he reiterated.
I watched in some dismay at this dramatic change in demeanor that overcame my employer. I could not imagine what Winslowe had said that would so affect him. Finally I held out my hand for the telegram, hoping that if I read it, I might learn something to account for this change. “Sir?”
He thrust the telegram into my hand. “Go ahead. Read it.” He glowered at the page.
I held the sheet near the light:
HOLMES: MUST INSIST YOUR INQUIRIES GO NO FURTHER STOP POLICE ARE NOT TO BLAME STOP NO INVESTIGATION WOULD REVEAL CORRUPTION STOP PERSISTENCE WILL BE TREATED AS ATTACK STOP WINSLOWE.
“I’d expect something of this sort from Spencer, but Winslowe?”
Mycroft Holmes shrugged. “They work on each other’s behalf. I reckon they thought I would accept orders regarding the police more readily if they came from Commander Winslowe. Not a bad assumption, as far as it goes, but a trifle simplistic.”
“They’re closing ranks,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily.
“That they are, and at the worst possible moment.” He folded his arms. “If he had waited just a few hours before he sent this, our work would be easier. But no aid for the wicked, as my old French granmama used to say.”
“Are you going to comply with this ... ultimatum?” I asked, holding up the telegram.
“Of course not,” he said. “But we can no longer be assured of help from the police, not with such a shot across our bow.” He lowered his eyes. “I wish I knew how much he has been told and by whom.”
“Do you suspect Winslowe?” I wanted to be more shocked than I was. What better position for a man determined to corrupt the police than a Superintendent? He might do vast amounts of damage without serious risk of exposure and with the power to quash all but the highest reviews of his decisions.
; “It is very tempting, and it would provide a degree of satisfaction that has eluded me in this mission, but it may be a bit too soon to cast that particular gauntlet,” said Mycroft Holmes, looking up as the sound of men climbing aboard our car came through the corridor. “And speaking of police, that will be the ones looking for Whitfield, I would think. I wish them luck with Sir Cameron.” This last was said with a wry smile.
A short while later there was a sharp rap on the door to this compartment. I opened the door, and held out our ticket stubs to the fresh-faced young constable who stood there. “Please come in. And you may search my compartment as well. I’m in the next along, number three. We are traveling in company with Herr Schere in compartment four; he is unwell.”
“Is he?” said the young constable, his accent placing him from the Yorkshire dales. “Well, we’ll not disturb him more than we must.”
Holmes and I waited patiently while the constable searched for Whitfield in a few unlikely places, then ushered him out of the compartment.
As soon as the constable was gone, Mycroft Holmes said, “Guthrie, we’ll be here for a short while, I fear. I’d like you to have a look around—you know, check the platforms and the baggage compartment to see if there are any indications of what happened to Whitfield. I can accept one set of criminals being aboard as coincidence, little as I may like it and inconvenient as they may be, but two such events pushes credulity beyond my limits. Whitfield being gone is a signal that strikes me as particularly ominous. At our next stop, I will have to find out who this Quest chappie is.”
“Then you think something may have become of Whitfield?” I shared his alarm.
“Dear Guthrie, do you not? I should have thought he would have bid us adieu when he left, if only on the hope of garnering another tip. I trust the avarice of men in his position far more than I trust these unplanned events. Do not tell me you haven’t had similar suspicions.”
The Flying Scotsman Page 27
