There was only one other word, the name that was the cause of Holmes’ foul mood.
Mycroft.
Holmes had not been wrong when he said our train was waiting. We were the only passengers on board what proved to be three carriages of opulence. I suspected this particular train was more used to seeing foreign dignitaries, perhaps even royalty, rather than humble medical practitioners such as myself.
But I wasn’t complaining, for Mycroft, or someone in his staff, had also seen fit to provide us with a buffet breakfast that would have fed a score of people. I had a plateful of deliciously spicy kedgeree washed down with enough tea to float a battleship and a small mountain of toast. I was quite pleasantly full by the time I joined Holmes in the central carriage, a well-appointed room that would not have seemed out of place in one of the more exclusive gentlemen’s clubs.
Holmes was already well settled in a leather armchair that he’d drawn close to a wood stove. I pulled another chair over to join him, and we both lit up pipes.
“Have you any idea why we are going to York?” I asked.
Holmes shook his head. “Although I suspect York will not be our final destination. It is far too public for one of Mycroft’s cloak-and-dagger establishments. If I were to hazard an educated guess, I would say we are going up the coast, somewhere near Whitby, most likely.”
He handed me a copy of an early edition of The Thunderer. “This was here when I arrived. Check the front page, Watson.”
Someone had circled one of the articles on the left-hand side halfway down.
Naked man found on shoreline.
The article went on to mention that the man was alive, although only barely, an apparent amnesiac, possibly an escaped lunatic, and that police were “baffled.”
“And you think this is why Mycroft wants us there?”
Holmes smiled thinly.
“It was not I who circled the article. It is obviously a message. But further speculation is moot without more facts. I suspect all will become clearer once we learn our actual destination.”
But Holmes was wrong on that point, at least as far as I was concerned.
We arrived in York in mid-morning, the train not stopping, as I might have expected, at one of the main station platforms, but instead being diverted to a siding well away from the public areas to the north of the main station. A carriage was waiting there for us, and, with no time for any questioning, we were shown inside and were soon off at a fast trot through the suburbs of the city and thence out into the countryside. As far as I could tell we were headed north and west, which would mean that Whitby was not our destination after all.
Holmes studied the route from his seat with his usual, seemingly nonchalant, level of concentration.
“Harrogate,” he said as we approached another town some hours later. He turned to me and smiled.
“The mists begin to clear.”
I was still as much in the dark as ever as we were taken through the town center and beyond, to a large estate on the northern fringes. I was rather surprised to see a tall chain-link fence around the entire property, and a patrol of armed soldiers guarding the gate.
“I do believe I was right,” Holmes said. “This is obviously one of Mycroft’s cloak-and-dagger establishments.”
He was proved right several minutes later when we pulled up at the entrance to a rather grand country mansion.
Mycroft Holmes stood on the doorstep, waiting for our arrival. “I do hope you had a pleasant journey,” he said, addressing the remark to me. He waved a hand languidly, and two men hurried to take our bags inside.
“I do hope you haven’t brought us all this way on an affair of state,” Holmes said, dryly. “You should know my preference for criminal matters by now. Politics is rather dull in comparison, don’t you think?”
Mycroft ignored him. Like myself, he had heard Holmes’ pronouncements on politics many times before, and obviously had no desire to stir up any fresh discord. Instead, he led us inside.
“I have had rooms prepared for you upstairs,” he said. “But that will have to wait. I have someone you need to see, and I am afraid it is rather urgent.”
“How urgent can it be, if the poor wretch has lost his memory?” Holmes asked.
“He is losing more than that,” Mycroft replied, tacitly acknowledging that Holmes had surmised the object of our visit correctly. “But I shall let you judge for yourself whether the trip is worth your effort.”
He led us through what appeared to be an ordinary country-house dining room. But once we reached the rear of the property, it became all too apparent that the display of normality had been intentional, to hide the true purpose of the site.
We went down a steep flight of stairs into a warren of tunnels and chambers carved directly out of the bedrock.
“This place was built as a hideaway for the King’s men when Cromwell was after them,” Mycroft said. “It seems rather apt that it is now being used in the service of the current Crown.”
What that service might be was not immediately apparent. There were chambers set up as chemical laboratories, one of which gave off a truly noxious stench in the confines of the cave system, and others that seemed to hold little more than rank after rank of caged animals, where the stench was meatier, but no less noxious. Other chambers were closed off behind heavy iron doors so that it was difficult to guess what might go on inside. But the further down the passageway we went, the narrower it became, and the doorways became more frequent, telling of smaller rooms beyond, behind what looked, to my eye, at least, to be prison-issue cell doors.
My guess was proved right when Mycroft led us into a room at the very far end of the corridor.
“I am afraid this may come as rather a shock to you,” he said, and opened the door.
A single flickering gas lamp, built into a grille high overhead, was the only source of light. It was dim, but more than bright enough for me to see that the man who lay on the single cot against the wall was close to death. I made to move inside, all of my medical instincts telling me I should help, but Mycroft stopped me by blocking the entrance with his arm.
“You may look, Doctor Watson,” he said. “But you cannot approach him. He is too far gone for that. And it is, I am afraid to say, highly contagious.”
The man lay naked on top of the cot. His whole upper torso was a mass of yellow, fibrous tissue that seemed to be growing directly out of his skin. It looked like some kind of plant life, but nothing I had ever come across before. Whatever it was, it was burrowing ever deeper and obviously causing the man a great deal of pain. He jerked, and cried out. Once again I moved forward, and once again Mycroft blocked my way.
“You cannot help,” he said softly. “He will be dead in an hour.”
He closed the cell door and led us away. I was loath to oblige him, and it was only Holmes’ hand on my shoulder that persuaded me to turn away.
“Let us hear his story,” Holmes said. “And if you wish it after that, Mycroft can do his own dirty business, and we shall walk away.”
Mycroft looked as though he might reply to that, but he must have seen the anger in my eyes, and he merely shrugged and led us back through the warren of chambers and up into the relative warmth and comfort of the dining room above.
“Holmes is correct,” Mycroft began. We were all three seated around a roaring fire, fresh pipes lit. “I do indeed mean to tell you a tale. It goes without saying that none of this must leave this room. It must remain secret. The future of the Empire may depend on it.”
Holmes snorted at that, but a glare from Mycroft was enough to quieten him, for now at least.
“But before I get to the poor chap down in the cavern, there are a couple of salient points I must mention. You will remember, of course, the mess you left me with in Chiswick last year?”
That mess, as he put it, had nearly been the death of Holmes and myself; a mysterious visitor from space that we only just managed to contain in time. As I remembered it, Holmes a
nd I had been instrumental in the final outcome, but I was in no mood to argue with Mycroft over trivialities; not when a man lay dying in the rooms below us. Mycroft continued when he saw that no disagreement was coming.
“The very idea that something could come out of the skies and wreak havoc so suddenly led to some hard questions being asked in the corridors of power. I was given the job of setting up a task force of a kind, a way of defending the country should it happen again. This facility is one such defensive outpost.”
I saw at once where this was leading.
“You have been experimenting on people, haven’t you?” I said, and I’m afraid I got rather angry. “That poor blighter downstairs is dying because of an experiment that got out of control. I’ll see to it that this place gets closed down, I’ll …”
Mycroft spoke softly. “You will do no such thing, Doctor Watson. You wouldn’t be allowed to,” he said, matter-of-factly enough, but I saw the hard glint in his eye that told me how seriously he had taken my statement. “But if I can put your mind at rest, we are not experimenting on people here. The condition of the poor chap downstairs seems to be the result of a tragic accident.
“No, I called you here for a particular reason. You see, we do not know who this man is. He is not on our staff, nor is he known around town, here, or in Whitby, where he was found. We need you to discover his identity, and track him back to where he came in contact with the material.”
“And the material, as you call it?” Holmes said, speaking for the first time since we sat down. “I take it you do know the source of that?”
Mycroft sighed. “An overzealous scientist created it. It was meant to be a defense against a biological attack, a hybrid combination of a fast-growing fungus and algae, that destroys any invaders it comes across by the simple expediency of eating them. But it proved too virulent, too invasive in its own right. As far as I know there is only one small sample in existence, in a sealed laboratory downstairs.
“As to how the poor chap you saw earlier got infected … that is something I rather hoped you could tell me.”
Holmes looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. I knew what he was asking. Did I want to be part of this case? What I really wanted to do was help the chap below stairs.
“Can I see the patient?” I asked Mycroft. “There may be something I can do to at least ease his passing.”
Mycroft shook his head. “It is too dangerous, Doctor Watson. The growth spreads too easily.”
Holmes sprung a trap that I had not seen being laid. “Tell me, Mycroft,” he said, softly. “How do you know that?”
Mycroft sighed deeply before continuing. “I would quote the line about official secrets, but I know you will blithely ignore that in any case.” He paused, as if considering how much to give away. “The man was interrogated when he was first brought in. As a result I now have three men in quarantine in another part of the house.”
Holmes stood. “Then if we cannot talk to your prisoner, we shall talk to them. Lead the way, Mycroft.”
Mycroft sighed again, which seemed to be as close as he ever came to showing outright displeasure, and took his time rising from his chair before leading us out into the hallway. From there, we went through a huge kitchen, past a series of pantries, and out into a long lean-to shed at the rear of the house. It had obviously been set up as a makeshift field hospital. Three men sat on camp beds. None of them looked ill from a distance, but as I moved closer I saw that they all had fresh sores on exposed flesh at arms, necks and cheeks. I got close enough to see that these sores were actually fresh burns.
“It seems to be the only way to control it,” Mycroft said. “We hope we have caught it early enough in these men, but they will be staying here for a while, just to make sure.”
Holmes started to walk toward the nearest patient, but again Mycroft held us back. “No closer,” he said. “Or I’ll have you quarantined alongside them.”
Holmes initially looked as if he might argue, then turned away to address the men directly. “Did you fetch the man from Whitby yourselves, or did the police bring him here?”
The man closest to Holmes, a thin, wiry man of around thirty, replied. “We went and got him from the station, sir,” he said. “The police didn’t know what to make of him. Naked he was, when they found him, like. The growth was just on his left hand at that time, but the coppers ain’t no fools around them parts. They kept him in solitary until we showed up. And we took one look at that thing on his hand, and stayed well back. We brought him here in a padded hansom, and none of us so much as touched him. We spoke, a bit closer than you are to me, sir. But that was close enough.”
He held up an arm showing a line of fresh weeping burns. “A lit cigarette end seems to do the trick fair enough,” he said. “But it don’t half hurt like buggery, pardon my French, sir.”
“And he said nothing of value?”
“He was in too much pain to make much sense, sir,” the man said. “He kept going on about his boy, but that’s all we got out of him. If he knew where he got infected, he didn’t say.”
Holmes turned back to Mycroft. “And you checked on missing children?”
“Give me some credit, Sherlock. Yes, we have the police checking on missing children. But you know as well as I do that such a task might take some time.”
Holmes nodded. “There’s just one more thing then, before we begin. I need to see where the sample you mentioned is stored.”
“I assure you,” Mycroft said. “It is secure.”
“It may well be secure now,” Holmes said. “But I suspect that has not always been the case.”
As we turned to leave the man who had spoken to us called out. “There’s one other thing, sir,” he said. “The prisoner wouldn’t stop singing. The same blasted thing, over and over again until it drove us near batty:
“Cheer up, Jack; bright smiles await you
“From the fairest of the fair,
“And her loving eyes will greet you
“With kind welcomes everywhere.”
A visit to the room where the samples were stored yielded no new information that I could see, although Holmes showed a particular interest in a rear window that was securely locked with a new padlock. He also took some time questioning the small man who was in charge of the storeroom, Doctor James Canning, a man of a very nervous disposition who would not look any of us in the eye, but who, Mycroft assured us, was a top man in his field.
“I don’t know what to tell you, gentlemen,” Canning said. “When we discovered six months ago that the yellow strain was so particularly virulent, we destroyed all but a tiny sample.” He took a glass jar from the shelf. Some pale vegetation wafted like seaweed, in a thick, viscous fluid. “I sealed the lid myself. As you can see, the wax is still in place.”
He showed the jar to us and Holmes gave it a cursory glance. “Who else has access to this room?” Holmes said, although he had once again moved to the window and was now studying the frame around the panes of glass.
“No one,” Channing replied. “I have the only key.”
“And when was this lock fitted?” Holmes said, fingering the new padlock.
Channing looked perplexed. “I have no idea,” he said.
“Rather strange, don’t you think, for the man with the only key to be unaware of the recent changing of a lock?”
Channing was obviously stumped for an answer to that.
I’m afraid I missed the rest of Holmes’ questions, as I was busy studying the storeroom itself, which consisted mainly of tall stacks of shelving, all containing a variety of specimens in glass jars and petri dishes. It was obvious to my medical eye that a wide variety of experiments were currently under way in this house. A look at Doctor Channing’s hands would have told me that in any case. They showed the telltale signs of a working researcher; fingers colored in a variety of hues by staining agents, old burns from getting too close to the burners, and a faint smell of acid from his singed clothing.
&nb
sp; After a few minutes, Holmes seemed satisfied he had learned all that he could.
“Have our bags brought back down,” he said to Mycroft. “We will need a carriage. We must be off to Whitby with all speed. And let us pray we are not already too late.”
“Too late for what?” I asked Holmes, after we had settled in the carriage and it was making its way down the long driveway.
“I fear we are dealing with espionage, Watson,” Holmes said as he lit a pipe. “I can only hope they have some concept of the power of what they are dealing with, although the fact that their agent was sloppy enough to get himself infected does not fill me with hope.”
“You believe the naked man to have been involved?”
“Intimately,” Holmes said, and smiled thinly. “Tell me, Watson. What is the best way to get something out of the country under the noses of the authorities?”
I thought about it for a few seconds while lighting a pipe of my own, but I was starting to see where he was leading.
“By boat,” I said. “From a small, quiet, port, perhaps?”
“Indeed,” Holmes said. “Seamen can be bought, boats can be hired, goods can be smuggled. Whitby has a lot of sailors. And sailors do so like to sing.”
Holmes sang softly under his breath. “Cheer up, Jack; bright smiles await you from the fairest of the fair.”
“But he was sloppy,” Holmes said. “Maybe he opened the jar to see what was inside; maybe it broke before he could deliver it. In either case, Watson, I fear that this vegetation may be loose in the countryside. It would be best if we could find it … before spring sets in and it really starts to grow.”
I took the opportunity of the long carriage journey to catch up on some of my lost sleep from the previous journey. I must have been more tired than I had thought, for despite the fact that we must have gone over some rough moorland terrain, I only woke as we descended into the town of Whitby.
I thought Holmes might want to go straight to the police station, but he surprised me by directing the carriage driver to the White Horse and Griffin, a coaching inn of some renown and repute; not all of it pleasant.
Sherlock Holmes: The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories Page 13
